Emily Bronte and Beethoven

Book excerpt: When Emily Brontë was studying music in Brussels in 1842, she was drawn into the city's appreciation of Beethoven. After her exposure to the works of the great composer, Brontë's creativity flourished and she went on to compose what was to be her only novel--Wuthering Heights. In Emily Brontë and Beethoven, Robert K. Wallace continues to work from the perspective he developed in his Jane Austen and Mozart--integrating two fields that have traditionally been kept apart. Wallace compares Brontë and Beethoven through a close examination of the Romantic traits that their works share. Innovative and stimulating, Wallace's study extends literary criticism into a new context where equilibrium, balance, proportion and symmetry serve as a fulcrum to launch the reader into a new understanding of the formal parallels, the moods and emotions that connect music and literature.