1 - Prelude -- a new intellectual art -- - 2 - Three easy pieces -- sonnet analysis -- - 3 - Polyphony -- the plural of the text -- - 4 - Tempo/Sequenza -- textual time in Astrophil and Stella -- - 5 - Two-part invention -- love/ruins/SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS -- - 6 - Theme with variations -- skin/deep: beauty -- - 7 - From the New World -- Will Archer's diary -- - 8 - Ein Heldenleben -- courtier, text, and death -- - 9 - Death and the maiden -- architecture -- - 10 - Divertimento -- the text as desiring-machine -- - 11 - Four-part fugue -- indeterminacy and undecideability -- - 12 - Encore -- irregardless -- - App - Discourse and its Choices
Arranged somewhat like a sonnet-sequence, in semi-sequential units, Chamber Music can be seen as following two streams. In the first instance, it presents a fresh and original discussion of the major Elizabethan sonnet-sequences: Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Spenser's Amoretti and Epithalamion, and Shakespeare's Sonnets and Lover's Complaint. The sonnet-sequences are read in tandem with works of modern criticism, including those of Roland Barthes, Michel Riffaterre, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida, and Umberto Eco. The book is also an experiment in modern (as opposed to postmodern) criticism in which the content of the argument modifies the presentation
