The role of the gods in the classical world's epic tradition has long been the subject of controversy. In the first book to discuss the problem of the gods across the entire classical literary tradition, rather than in a few individual works, Professor Feeney draws upon the writings of the ancient critics, and looks in detail at the work of the poets themselves.

I argue that, because God is the author of history and has a purpose for his creation, evolution has a plot and can be analyzed with tools drawn from literary criticism. This necessitates engagement with the “epic of evolution” genre of scientific literature. I survey several prominent versions of the epic and distinguish between a purely naturalistic epic of evolution and a goal‐oriented Christian epic of evolution (CEE). In dealing with CEE, I use the thought of (...) J. R. R. Tolkien, along with Kevin Vanhoozer and Dorothy Sayers, to discuss the ways in which we can theologically legitimate speaking of God as the “author” of evolutionary history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epic and Tragic Music: The Union of the Arts in the Eighteenth CenturyJoshua BillingsI. The Union of the Arts in WeimarAround 1800 in Weimar, thought on Greek tragedy crystallized around the union of speech, music, and gesture—what Wagner would later call the Gesamtkunstwerk. Friedrich Schiller and Johann Gottfried Herder both found something lacking in modern spoken theater in comparison with ancient tragedy’s synthesis of the arts. Schiller’s 1803 (...) “Trauerspiel mit Chören,” Die Braut von Messina, represents a radical experiment in recreating the ancient union of the arts.1 The Greek tragic chorus, revived in Schiller’s drama, becomes the modern locus for this union. In a preface appended to the published version of the play, Schiller writes,The tragic work of poetry first becomes a whole through its theatrical performance: the poet only gives the words; music and dance must be added as well to enliven them. As long as the chorus lacks this powerful sensory accompaniment, so long will it appear in the economy of a tragedy as an alien element, a foreign body, a retardation.2 [End Page 99]Exactly contemporary (and possibly in response), Herder’s discussion of drama in his journal Adrastea similarly views the union of the arts in ancient tragedy as a corrective for modern drama:3A Greek who attended our tragedy [Trauerspiel], used to the musical voice of his own, would have to find in it a sad play [trauriges Spiel]. “How wordy-mute,” he would say, “how dull and soundless! Have I stepped into a decorated grave? You shout and sigh and bluster! Move your arms, strain your facial features, reason, declaim; but does your voice and feeling never become song? Do you not miss the strength of this demonic expression? Do your rhythms, your iambs never urge you on to the accents of the true language of the gods?”4The focus on media distinguishes these Weimar discussions of tragedy both from the Jena aesthetics of the Schlegel brothers and from the Idealist “philosophy of the tragic” already underway in the works of Schelling, Hölderlin, and Hegel.5 Though both Schiller and Herder are relatively indifferent to dance, their writings reflect strong interests in music.6 Their considerations [End Page 100] of tragedy show a close engagement with the sensory experience of drama that is unusual for its time, and has little precedent in Germany.For Schiller’s late poetics, the union of words, music, and gesture is a means of radically dividing the experience of theater from daily life. The tragic chorus “should be for us a living wall, which tragedy sets up around itself in order to close itself off wholly from the real world.”7 It “justifies the tragic poet in this raising of tone, which fills the ear, which strains the spirit, which broadens the whole mind.”8 Musical speech, Schiller argues, allows for an expression that transcends conventional language and quotidian existence. Schiller had hoped “to let [the choral intermezzos] be recited in the way of song and to accompany them with an instrument,” though his wish went unfulfilled in the first, and subsequent performances.9 Yet even after relinquishing the real possibility of a union of the arts in performances of Braut, Schiller upheld it as an ideal in his preface.Herder is remembered today primarily for his elaboration of an organic historicism, which understands cultural phenomena according to the circumstances of their creation. Yet his concern was more than merely historical; especially in the Adrastea, he continually sought guidance for the present in the events of the past. A contemporary, writing shortly after Herder’s death, saw the two orientations, historical and critical, as equally important: investigation of the past was intended as “a didactic or warning image” for his own time.10 The guiding idea of the journal was similarly educative, based on Herder’s understanding of Adrastea as a principle of justice and moderation.11 In Herder’s thought, as in most writing on ancient literature of the eighteenth century, there is no absolute division between scholarly and critical concerns: the study of ancient works was both an end in itself and a... (shrink)

An award-wining biologist takes us on the dramatic expeditions that unearthed the history of life on our planet. Just 150 years ago,most of our world was an unexplored wilderness.Our sense of how old it was? Vague and vastly off the mark. And our sense of our own species’ history? A set of fantastic myths and fairy tales. Fossils had been known for millennia, but they were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. In the tradition of The (...) Microbe Hunters and Gods, Graves, and Scholars, Sean Carroll’s Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more amazing true story of how our world evolved. Carroll recounts the most important discoveries in two centuries of national history — from Darwin’s trip around the world to CharlesWalcott’s discovery of pre-Cambrian life in the Grand Canyon; from Louis and Mary Leakey’s investigation of our deepest past in East Africa to the trailblazers in modern laboratories who have located a time clock in our DNA. Join him in a rousing voyage of discovery, from the epic journeys of pioneering naturalists to the breakthroughs making headlines today. (shrink)

A distinctive feature ofAeneid8 is the constant interplay and fluctuation of registers, with high epic and thegenus grandealternating with the lighter strains or learned allusions associated with thegenus tenue. As one commentator has remarked, ‘Man darf das Buch allein schon wegen seines Reichtums an Aitien als das ‘kallimacheischste’ derAeneisbezeichnen.’ Beyond the emphasis on aetiology—the Cacus myth in particular is presented asaitionfor the consecration of the Ara Maxima—the Callimachean complexion comes out also in several smaller not-so-serious or learned touches, typically (...) at unlikely moments to infuse an element of humour in an otherwise intensely dramatic narrative. The Hercules–Cacus episode conflates high drama and low comedy as the cattle rustler's slightly ridiculous stratagem becomes a gigantic clash resonating with the primal gigantomachy. Among the rudimentary weapons of mass destruction unleashed by Hercules upon Cacus, the hapaxmolaris echoes its Homeric equivalent μύλαξ, itself a hapax, with the recherché term then reappearing at Ovid,Metamorphoses3.59: missiles and diction are equally outlandish. When Hercules in a reprise of the celebrated Empedoclean leap plungesper ignemin pursuit of Cacus, an evocation of the Sicilian philosopher's fiery exit adds a touch of comedy at the heated moment. And from this inferno Virgil moves to Olympus, lowering the tone but raising the temperature as Venus in a domestic comedy seduces the uxorious Vulcan into preparing new armour for Aeneas: now she kindles flames of a different sort in the fire-god in a scene marked by witty double entendre that provides a playful contrast with the unfolding drama at Pallanteum. At moments like these, a lighter strain is audible through the epic thunder,Vergilius ludensis hard at work. (shrink)

The different world views of the authors of the Iliad and the Odyssey are illustrated by selection of verses used by both poets. The role of the gods in the Odyssey precludes the tragic conception of human life that is characteristic of the Iliad.

In the collection of poems entitled Psychodia Platonica, and in particular in the poem entitled Psychozoia, Henry More laid the groundwork for his life-long inquiry into the nature of the human self. He provided a poetic commentary of Plotinus’s Enneads in which three ontological dimensions – the life of nature, animal perception and the intellect – created an allegorical background against which one could articulate a systematic analysis of the individual human self in its relationships with God and created reality. (...) Psychozoia ended with a conversion, in which the soul of a Platonic pilgrim was released from its condition of ‘autaesthesia’ so that it was finally able to reach a state of ‘anautoaesthesia’. Significantly, More characterized this crucial shift from self-perception to the annihilation of the individual self as a motion towards ‘self-senslessnesse’ and ‘self-deadnesse’. Regardless of its aesthetic merits, More’s poem dramatizes key philosophical notions, while bringing to the fore the prodigious effervescence of his linguistic skills. In this sense, Psychozoia remains an important document to understand the evolution of More’s thought. (shrink)

Focused on Nandi Timmana’s sixteenth-century Telugu epic poem, Pārijātāpaharaṇamu, this article analyzes citrakāvya, a genre of poetry that includes various kinds of patterned verses, word puzzles, and figural poems. The seventeenth-century Telugu grammarian Appakavi outlines three genres of citrakāvya: 1) citrakavitvamu ; 2) bandhakavitvamu ; and 3) garbhakavitvamu. Timmana employs all three genres of citrakāvya in Theft of a Tree 5.92–99, which are set in the voice of Nārada praising Kṛṣṇa as god. Rather than reading citrakāvya as simply a (...) form of alaṅkāra, I argue that citrakāvya primarily functions as a form of stotra in the context of Timmana’s Theft of a Tree. Shifting the flow of his rather fast-paced narrative, Timmana intentionally uses citrakāvya to praise and even capture god through the complex figuration of syllables and sounds. Timmana’s citras are essential to scripting a new layer of the pārijāta narrative, one that highlights the voice of the poet himself speaking to his god. (shrink)

The Gilgamesh Epic tells of a distraught young king who traveled to the end of the world in search of the wisdom needed to accept human mortality and the courage to lead a compassionate and fruitful life. He finds this wisdom in the Story of the Flood. The myth is built around a mysterious word of guidance and compassion that the god of wisdom whispers in the ear of his faithful human servant. This word not only saves the servant's (...) life but inaugurates an unending conversation between heaven and earth that opens a truly human world to him. This creative and salvific word saves King Gilgamesh's life and engenders the constructive governing of his city. (shrink)

This article explores the significance of the following fact: in neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey does one find a simile about Zeus. I argue that just as ancient Near Eastern texts characterize a god by declaring it impossible to fashion a comparison about him or her, so the Homeric epics characterize Zeus by avoiding statements in the shape “Zeus (is) like X.”.

It is well known that in early Greek epic old age was something that could be scraped off a man, and it is the purpose of this note to explore the image and to suggest a possible origin. The idea is first attested in a counterfactual conditional sentence in Phoenix's speech atIl.9.445–6: ‘nor even if [a god] himself were to undertake to render me young and flourishing after scraping off old age …’ ; in a description of Medea's magical (...) rejuvenation of Aeson in theNostoi; and in the account of Eos' botched attempt to make Tithonus immortal in theHomeric Hymn to Aphrodite:οὐδ' ἐνόησε μετὰ ϕρεσὶ πότνια Ἠώςἥβην αἰτῆσαι, ξῦσαί τ' ἄπο γῆρας ὀλοιόν.Nor did lady Dawn think in her mind to ask for youth and to scrape off ruinous old age.This language also occurs in Late Antiquity, and Andrew Faulkner in his commentary on theHymn cites Greg. Nanz.Carm.1.2.2.483 in the fourth centurya.d.and the much later Cometas,Anth. Pal.15.37.2. So far as the imagery implicit in these passages is concerned, S. D. Olson writes, ‘old age is imagined as a scurf or patina that can be scoured off a person’. Faulkner, however, prefers a more precise reference: ‘Griffin … relates it to the idea of old age as a skin that can be shed, as that of a snake’, and he helpfully cites Theodoros Prodromos,Carmina historica24.18, ἀπόξυσαι τὸ γῆρας ὥσπερ ὄϕις. (shrink)

The focus of this essay is on Xenophanes’ criticism of anthropomorphic representation of the gods, famously sounding like a declaration of war against a constituent part of the Greek religion, and adopting terms and a tone that are unequalled amongst “pre-Socratic” authors for their directness and explicitness. While the main features of Xenophanes’ polemic are well known thanks to some of the most studied fragments of the pre-Socratic tradition, a different line of enquiry from the usual one is attempted (...) by considering the multi-layered background of the religious beliefs revolving around the idea that the gods have human form as outlined in the tradition of epic poetry or represented in cult statues: in the light of this consideration Xenophanes’ text can take on some new characteristics. In the second part of the article, emphasis is put on the importance of the correlation Xenophanes established between the issue of the appearance of the gods and that of the certainty of knowledge, in terms that have exerted tremendous influence on later thought, most notably on Plato in the Timaeus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Job, Boethius, and Epic TruthJames G. WilliamsJob, Boethius, and Epic Truth, by Ann W. Anstell; xiii & 240pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, $32.95.Ann Anstell succeeds in showing that the book of Job and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy served as vehicles for the transmission and transformation of heroic poetry through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. The style is sometimes forbidding for the nonspecialist because (...) of dry descriptions of various texts and the extensive quotation of Latin without translation. There are certain sections, however, where the author is clearly passionately engaged in the subject and consequently comes across much more clearly and vividly to the reader; this is especially true of part of the discussion of Gregory’s Moralia in Job and the chapter on “Boethian Lovers,” particularly the treatment of Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum.The thesis and argument of the book are of great potential interest both to literary critics and literary historians and to philosophers and historians of philosophy. The “epic truth” of the title is a bridge between literary genre and transmission and the kind of philosophy concerned with concepts of self and [End Page 379] world. Anstell argues that the conventional distinctions between classical epic and medieval romance tend to overlook the historical continuity between the two genres. “The Middle Ages interpreted classical epic in a way that entailed its subsequent imitation in romance” (p. 212). Romance makes explicit what epic is implicitly about, namely a way or journey to self-knowledge.Boethius, writing about 525 as a prisoner, draws upon Virgil’s Georgics and Stoic and Neoplatonic writings. Lady Philosophy appears to him and educes him into recollection of his own true being through remembering the heroes of the past. He thus recognizes his own mortality and passions, the importance of reason, and the reality of his immortal soul. This journey to concrete awareness of the immortal soul is a key step towards the epic truth that emerged in Christian thinking, but in Boethius the centrality of Christ as Logos-Redeemer does not come into view. It does, however, in the tradition of reading and interpreting Job.Through his meditations and moral instructions on Job, Gregory (Pope, 590–604) used the precedent of Boethius’ Consolation to draw the classical form of the vir, the heroic mortal and the model of virtus, virtue, into the Christian configuration of sainthood. Using a Christian form of allegory, the “other-speaking” of a text that articulates its deeper structure and truth, Gregory portrays Job as a man of fortitude, courage, and patience whose suffering becomes the occasion truly to understand that his immutable soul is not the prisoner of the body that is sick and dying. “Job’s human nature, perfected in wisdom and power through suffering, reflects Christ’s own divine humanity, and far surpasses in heroic virtue the excellence of even an allegorized Aeneas” (p. 91).These two works, then, are the chief exemplars of the “heroic poetry” of the Middle Ages, which joined the literatures commonly designated as “epic” and “romance.” This medieval synthesis insisted on figural or allegorical continuity with classical antiquity but departed formally from classical literary conventions. Job and Boethius provided critical authorization for these tendencies. Job as Christ-figure was the model for legends of the saints, while the Consolation influenced the romance literature that featured stages of spiritual growth; this literature “extended into a history of personal salvation by assimilating the lover’s sufferings to those of Job and Christ” (p. 214). These two paradigmatic works, which provided models of the stable saint as Christ-figure and the emotional pilgrim on a spiritual journey, began to dissolve in the Renaissance. Boethius’s Consolation ceased to be understood in terms of the epic and Job came to be seen as a drama and a tragedy. Thus the author concludes that “the virtues... the Middle Ages attributed to Job, especially wisdom and fortitude, belong no longer to man but to God” (p. 215). Human beings must make their way in an inconstant, puzzling world separated from God.James G. WilliamsSyracuse UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In his epic Paradise Lost, John Milton aims at a philosophically and theologically sound theodicy in order to “justify the ways of God to men”1. Milton’s approach has been criticised for creating an unsolvable tension between God’s foreknowledge and man’s free will and responsibility. The article wants to show that this criticism turns out to be unjustified if the philosophical basis behind the epic is thoroughly examined. Milton draws heavily on St. Augustine’s ontology: Every kind of being depends (...) on its intrinsic goodness insofar as it really is what it is by nature. God himself is the ultimate goodness: Therefore he is not subject to change, but transcends space and time. In his perfection, he cannot lack any kind of knowledge, but knows all things in an atemporal manner, without depriving men and women of their capability of free choice and action, for these are the distinct features that constitute the goodness of human nature. The crucial question of the article is why, according to Augustine and Milton, God’s foreknowledge should not at all be confused with fated determinism. (shrink)

This historical study of the responses that man has tried to give to the problem of death-"If I must some day die, what can I do to satisfy my desire to live?" as defined by Fr. Dunne—is occasionally turgid but more often provocative and enlightening. From the dawn of history in Mesopotamia to the present, the book investigates the political and literary consequences of different answers to this question and of different attitudes toward death in general. Although the book's organization (...) is chronological, it is explicitly oriented to contemporary concerns, with Nietzsche's statement that "God is dead" serving as a unifying leit-motif. The most rewarding sections are the discussions of Homer's epics and the analysis of the confusions between the right to life and the right over life that are traced from Calvin, Luther, Hobbes, and Rousseau to modern totalitarianism.—W. B. K. (shrink)

This historical study of the responses that man has tried to give to the problem of death-"If I must some day die, what can I do to satisfy my desire to live?" as defined by Fr. Dunne—is occasionally turgid but more often provocative and enlightening. From the dawn of history in Mesopotamia to the present, the book investigates the political and literary consequences of different answers to this question and of different attitudes toward death in general. Although the book's organization (...) is chronological, it is explicitly oriented to contemporary concerns, with Nietzsche's statement that "God is dead" serving as a unifying leit-motif. The most rewarding sections are the discussions of Homer's epics and the analysis of the confusions between the right to life and the right over life that are traced from Calvin, Luther, Hobbes, and Rousseau to modern totalitarianism.—W. B. K. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Coleridge’s Intellectual Intuition, the Vision of God, and the Walled Garden of “Kubla Khan”Douglas HedleyIn his seminal work of 1917 Das Heilige Rudolph Otto quotes a number of passages as instances of the “Numinose.” Alongside those quotations from more conventional mystics, Plotinus, and Augustine, Otto refers to Coleridge’s “savage place” in Kubla Khan. 1 It is also pertinent that, when trying to define Romanticism, C. S. Lewis appeals to (...) the longing for the “unnameable something” fired by “morning cobwebs in late summer” or the “opening lines of Kubla Khan.” 2 Perhaps it is a mere coincidence that two of the most penetrating and influential scholars of religion in the twentieth century should appeal to Coleridge and his poem “Kubla Khan.” I wish to suggest reasons why the link between the imagery of “Kubla Khan” and a mystical experience of transcendence is not merely fortuitous. Indeed the connection between Coleridge’s mature writing and the imagery of the poem shows that we have good reason for seeing him as consciously writing, both as a poet and as a philosopher, within a visionary mystical tradition. I propose that it is no accident that Coleridge’s most visionary poem draws upon the central Christian image of paradise: the walled garden.This is an attempt not to interpret “Kubla Khan” but rather to suggest Coleridge’s place in the history of ideas as a Christian poet and philosopher. He is best described as an essentially speculative and mystical philosopher-theologian. 3 [End Page 115] By “speculative” I mean a theology inspired by those Church Fathers who emphasize the “vision” of God as an intellectual contemplation (speculari) of the transcendent Absolute, the prius of all being. The scholastics, the medieval German mystics, the Cambridge Platonists, and some of the German Idealists have all been influenced by such a speculative impulse. 4 Hegel uses the term “speculative” for his Dialectic. 5A philosophical or “speculative” approach to theology has invoked hostility from Tertullian onwards. Coleridge’s philosophy of religion often excited the fear of the new pantheistic German theology. John Henry Newman castigated Coleridge’s speculation as more heathen than Christian. Yet the speculative movement in theology spawned both a radical and a conservative wing, and we have to judge Coleridge’s thought in the light of the more conservative branch of nineteenth-century Idealism. D. F. Strauss jettisoned the transcendent “yonder” of traditional theology in favor of his philosophical or “scientific” approach to Christianity. Coleridge, however, could not adhere to theology of immanence; he wished to present a theology of an adamantly transcendent character.The walled garden is an eminently appropriate image of transcendence and was used as such by the fifteenth-century Christian Platonist Nicholas of Cusa, who is one of the links between Patristic theology and German Idealism. I shall draw upon his book The Vision of God as a paradigm of the sort of speculative mysticism which informs Coleridge’s metaphysics and much of his poetry. 6 Reflection upon an exotic poetic image may help us to clarify one of Coleridge’s philosophical tenets; the walled garden can be seen to symbolize that transcendent numinous reality, which the soul inchoately and barely consciously seeks and strives for.Coleridge’s “Mysticism” and the Imagery of “Kubla Khan”Richard Holmes claims that the “Kubla Khan” provides evidence of a transition in Coleridge’s interests and presents this switch from “classical and religious mythology” to the “drama of self-knowledge... the growth of consciousness and civilisation” as a key to Coleridge’s poetry. Holmes writes: [End Page 116][H]is instinct that the modern Epic subject must now centre on “the mind of man,” through “travels, voyages and histories,” shows a shift of poetic focus characteristic of the new Romantic age. The Epic could no longer draw on classical or religious mythology for the framework of its action. It must become contemporary with the world of scientific, anthropological, and psychological exploration: it must centre in some way on the drama of self-knowledge, on the growth of consciousness and civilisation. 7Coleridge would not have seen a conflict between the drama of self-consciousness and classical and religious mythology. In “Kubla... (shrink)

‘The last stanza of Horace's poem’, writes Denis Feeney of Hor. Carm. 3.3, ‘declares virtually outright that he has just been “quoting” epic matter: “desine peruicax | referre sermones deorum et | magna modis tenuare paruis” ’. A poem that recounts the doings of gods automatically demands comparison with epic, but if the speeches of gods are presented, all the more so. Horace's poem in fact evokes an episode within a specific epic poem, the Council (...) of the Gods that occurred during the first book of Ennius’ Annales. But such divine councils are a ‘stock epic scene’, and rather more than that: they are moments when epic is at its most quintessentially epic. In simple terms, an epic poet ‘may underline the significance and increase the dramatic effect’ of a critical point in the narrative ‘by showing us that it exercised the gods’, and that analysis applies to any divine presence in a poem: if a key impulse of epic is to amplify the significance of human activity, those occasions when higher forces overtly assert their control of human destiny satisfy a number of fundamental preoccupations of the genre. But in the Council of the Gods we have the most developed and impressive realization of this divine concern for mortal existence, as well as a topos that in Rome at least achieved special status within the broader field of divine machinery in epic. That status is perhaps reflected in a tendency discernible in the Roman section of the tradition for such councils to fall early in the epic narrative, as if initiating the epic plot. If so, however, Virgil's Council at Aen. 10.1–117 defies expectation by failing to be convened until the plot of the epic is very far advanced indeed, and even then, as this article will consider, achieving strikingly less than one might expect of a plenary gathering of supernatural powers at an advanced stage in an epic narrative. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs the trip to Rome of the first Bollandist Fathers, providing numerous historical, documentary and cultural details, while offering a generous cross-section of the academic life of the period.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there emerged a radically new kind of music based on recorded environmental sounds instead of sounds of traditional Western musical instruments. Centered in Paris around the composer, music theorist, engineer, and writer Pierre Schaeffer, this became known as musique concrète because of its use of concrete recorded sound fragments, manifesting a departure from the abstract concepts and representations of Western music notation. Furthermore, the term sound object was used to denote our perceptual images (...) of such fragments. Sound objects and their features became the focus of an extensive research effort on the perception and cognition of music in general, remarkably anticipating topics of more recent music psychology research. This sound object theory makes extensive use of metaphors, often related to motion shapes, something that can provide holistic representations of perceptually salient, but temporally distributed, features in different kinds of music. (shrink)

Background. Attending to goal-relevant information can leave us metaphorically ‘blind’ or ‘deaf’ to the next relevant information while searching among distracters. This temporal cost lasting for about a half a second on the human selective attention has been long explored using the attentional blink paradigm. Although there is evidence that certain visual stimuli relating to one’s area of expertise can be less susceptible to attentional blink effects, it remains unexplored whether the dynamics of temporal selective attention vary with expertise and (...) objects types in the auditory modality. Methods. Using the auditory version of the attentional blink paradigm, the present study investigates whether certain auditory objects relating to musical and perceptual expertise could have an impact on the transient costs of selective attention. In this study, expert cellists and novice participants were asked to first identify a target sound, and then to detect instrumental timbres of cello or organ, or human voice as a second target in a rapid auditory stream. Results. The results showed moderate evidence against the attentional blink effect for voices independent of participants’ musical expertise. Experts outperformed novices in their overall accuracy levels of target identification and detection, reflecting a clear benefit of musical expertise. Importanly, the musicianship advantage disappeared when the human voices served as the second target in the stream. Discussion. The results are discussed in terms of stimulus salience, the advantage of voice processing, as well as perceptual and musical expertise in relation to attention and working memory performances. (shrink)