FISCHLIN, Daniel

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Concordia University, B.F.A., M.A.; York University, Ph.D. (literary studies, theater studies).

ADDRESSES: Offıce—University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada, Department of English, became professor, 2001, joint director of Ph.D. program.

AWARDS, HONORS: Teaching award from Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, 1998; University of Guelph Faculty Association award, 1998, College of Arts teaching award, 1998; Premier's Research Excellence Award, 2000.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Negation, Critical Theory, and PostmodernTextuality, Kluwer Academic Publishers (Boston, MA), 1994.

(Editor, with Mark Fortier) James I: The True Law ofFree Monarchies and Basilikon Doron ("Tudor and Stuart Text" series), Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1996.

(Editor, with Richard Dellamora) The Work of Opera:Genre, Nationhood, and Sexual Difference, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

In Small Proportions: A Poetics of the English Ayre,1596-1622, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

(Editor, with Mark Fortier) Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology of Plays from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, Routledge (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor, with Mark Fortier) Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 2002.

(With Martha Nandorfy) Through the Looking Glass:Eduardo Galeano, Literature, and Human Rights, Black Rose Press (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 2002.

(Editor, with Ajay Heble) The Other Side of Nowhere:Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), in press.

Contributor to books, including Shakespeare in Canada, edited by Diana Brydon and Irena Makaryk, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002, and to periodicals, including Renaissance Quarterly, Canadian Theatre Review, and Textual Practice.

SIDELIGHTS: Professor Daniel Fischlin's research interests include modern culture and interdisciplinary studies, with an emphasis on the various connections between literature and music. Among his volumes is a book titled The Work of Opera: Genre, Nationhood, and Sexual Difference, a collection of essays he coedited with Richard Dellamora. Mary C. Francis noted in Opera Quarterly that nationhood and sexual difference receive, by far, the most attention in the collection. "The best of the book's offerings . . . take into account music and the world it creates in each opera," she wrote. "But a great deal of this book will not be to the taste of the opera lover who prizes the musical aspects of the art above others."

Among the contributing scholars are Ralph Locke, Susan McClary, Ruth Solie, and Lawrence Kramer. Francis felt McClary's essay on Carmen to be "one of the most rewarding in the volume, persuasively grounded in the music that creates the emotionally charged atmosphere of the opera."

Critic Allan Hepburn, in the University of Toronto Quarterly, wrote that "although this collection focuses on representations of gender . . . and problems of nationhood . . . it has the collateral benefit of righting the achievement of Benjamin Britten. Jim Ellis, in an examination of Britten's 'War Requiem,' provides a savvy interpretation of Britten's homosexuality." Hepburn noted that "the relation of Britten (the pacifist) to Britain (the nation) has long required revaluation. Essays by Ellis and Daniel Fischlin go a long way towards refining the terms of that revaluation." Hepburn concluded that, "The Work of Opera brings together in an admirable way a colloquy of voices that demonstrate the urgency of these issues, and the complexity with which opera addresses them."

In reviewing In Small Proportions: A Poetics of the English Ayre, 1596-1622 in Renaissance Quarterly, Elise Bickford Jorgens wrote that "from a critical stance that builds on earlier scholarship while making good use of a number of postmodern perspectives, the author develops a fresh and interesting account of the intensity and appeal of the short-lived phenomenon of the ayre or lute song. While the presence of music in the genre is fully acknowledged, Fischlin's subject is not music, nor even musical setting, but the literary aspects of the ayre as song."

Bryan N. S. Gooch, meanwhile, noted in the University of Toronto Quarterly, that Fischlin "offers a broad, useful, introductory chapter in which he deals with background, structure, thematic issues, and textual approaches, including paradox, introspection, and the problem of inexpressibility, a familiar issue in so much of the lyric poetry of the time."

Fischlin cites texts from English songbooks and poems that were set to music, and notes that they were performed for aristocratic audiences in personal and private settings. They include adaptations of lyrics written by Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Ralegh, Sidney, Greville, Gascoigne, and Daniel. According to Steven W. May, a critic for Sixteenth Century Journal, Fischlin "describes some of the pervasive characteristics of the ayres that unify his study: the ayres' collective illustration of the shift from Elizabethan to metaphysical poetics, their treatment of subjects that cannot be fully expressed or imparted to the audience, and their often subversive content."

Scott Nixon, in Review of English Studies, noted that Fischlin's "main focus is on the texts of those ayres which were composed by John Dowland. Nonetheless, his study is anything but narrow. In discussing individual ayres, Fischlin combines a close analysis of rhetoric and music, informed by an awareness of issues raised by new historicism and contemporary literary theory. . . . the chief value of his monograph lies in the meticulously close readings of texts that have previously been glossed over, marginalized, and even ignored."

Fischlin is also the editor, with Mark Fortier, of Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I, a collection of essays by sixteen scholars that explore monarchic writing in general and, more specifically, the range of writing by the Scottish king who succeeded England's Elizabeth I.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

English Studies, October, 2001, William Zunder, review of In Small Proportions: A Poetics of the English Ayre, 1596-1622, p. 466.

Modern Language Review, January, 2000, Christopher R. Wilson, review of In Small Proportions, pp. 177-178.

Notes, September, 1999, Emanuele Senici, review of The Work of Opera: Genre, Nationhood, and Sexual Difference, p. 113.

Notes and Queries, June, 2000, John Holmes, review of In Small Proportions, p. 242.

Opera Quarterly, spring, 2000, Mary C. Francis, review of The Work of Opera, pp. 260-264.

Renaissance Quarterly, autumn, 1999, Elise Bickford Jorgens, review of In Small Proportions, p. 930.

Review of English Studies, August, 1999, Scott Nixon, review of In Small Proportions, pp. 380-382.

Sixteenth Century Journal, summer, 1999, Steven W. May, review of In Small Proportions, pp. 631-632.

University of Toronto Quarterly, winter, 1998, Allan Hepburn, review of The Work of Opera, pp. 368-369; winter, 1999, Bryan N. S. Gooch, review of In Small Proportions, p. 207.*