Sound and Literature

This volume maps and interrogates the significance of sound as a central concept in literary studies.

Anna Snaith (Edited by)

9781108479608, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 June 2020

438 pages, 7 b/w illus.
23.5 x 16 x 2.9 cm, 0.76 kg

What does it mean to write in and about sound? How can literature, seemingly a silent, visual medium, be sound-bearing? This volume considers these questions by attending to the energy generated by the sonic in literary studies from the late nineteenth century to the present. Sound, whether understood as noise, music, rhythm, voice or vibration, has long shaped literary cultures and their scholarship. In original chapters written by leading scholars in the field, this book tunes in to the literary text as a site of vocalisation, rhythmics and dissonance, as well as an archive of soundscapes, modes of listening, and sound technologies. Sound and Literature is unique for the breadth and plurality of its approach, and for its interrogation and methodological mapping of the field of literary sound studies.

Part I. Origins: 1. Hearing and the senses Sam Halliday
2. Fragments on/of voice David Nowell Smith
3. Sonic forms: Ezra Pound's anti-metronome modernism in context Jason David Hall
4. Classical music and literature Gemma Moss
5. Aesthetics, music, noise Brad Bucknell
Part II. Development: 6. Literary soundscapes Helen Groth
7. Noise James G. Mansell
8. 'Lost in music': wild notes and organized sound Paul Gilroy
9. Media history and sound technology Julie Beth Napolin
Part III. Applications: 10. What we talk about when we talk about talking books Edward Allen
11. Prose sense and its soundings Garrett Stewart
12. Dissonant prosody A. J. Carruthers
13. Deafness and sound Rebecca Sanchez
14. Vibrations Shelley Trower
15. Feminism and sound Ella Finer
16. Wireless imaginations Debra Rae Cohen
17. Attending to theatre sound studies and Complicite's The Encounter Adrian Curtin
18: Bob Dylan and sound: a tale of the recording era Barry J. Faulk.

Subject Areas: Media studies [JFD], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS]