Melopoetics, the study of the multifarious relations between music and literature, has emerged in recent years as an increasingly popular field of interdisciplinary inquiry. Brought together in this volume for the first time within the broadly conceived framework of this developing comparative discipline, noted musicologists and literary critics explore diverse topics of shared concern such as literary theory as a model for musical criticism, genre theories in literature and music, the criticism and analysis of texted music, and the role of aesthetic, historical, and cultural understanding in concepts of text--music convergence. This book of fourteen original essays--united here not by a common ideology but by common subject matter--demonstrates how musical and literary scholarship can combine forces effectively on the common ground of contemporary critical theory and interpretive practice. The concluding essay by interdisciplinary historian Hayden White offers a magisterial, non-biased assessment of the individual contributions. By generalizing the critical issues raised, White locates this ambitious enterprise of contemplating "music and text" in the larger context of intellectual history.