Sound's effects : sonic epistemology in the Victorian novel
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- My dissertation, "Sound's Effects: Sonic Epistemology in the Victorian Novel, " identifies and criticizes the vococentrism that remains dominant in scholarship on literary sound, arguing that this inhibits the development of a stronger relationship between literary studies and the interdisciplinary field of sound studies, and showing that there is much to be gained from a focus on the full range of a novel's sounds beyond the attention-grabbing voice. The detail-rich novels of the nineteenth century make demands on the reader's attention that are difficult to sustain without fluctuations in focus, and a novel's sounds are all too easily relegated to the background, assumed to merely support the narrative as part of what Roland Barthes theorized as fiction's referential illusion (that which produces the reality effect). In direct opposition to such assumptions, I demonstrate that the authors whose work features in my three chapters -- Charlotte Brontë, Joseph Conrad, and Charles Dickens -- not only intend for the reader to pay close aural attention, but to an extent use their narratives to stress the importance of doing so. Engaging with recent interdisciplinary calls for the consideration of specifically sonic epistemologies, I discover that sonic forms of knowledge abound in the Victorian novel and that, far from remaining merely descriptive and inert, sound does important work in these texts, affecting everything from character relations to narrative structure. My first chapter, on Brontë's Villette, reframes those minor sounds most likely to be overlooked in the process of reading (footsteps, horses hooves, knocks) as part of an affective listening process that ultimately reveals itself to be a structural model for the entire narrative, particularly with regards to its famously enigmatic ending. Chapter two examines the potential dangers of entrenched epistemic stances and assumptions in Conrad's Nostromo and "Typhoon, " arguing that the author makes great use of sound in order to explore the maturing or stagnation of imagination and temperament in these works. I illustrate the importance of temperament to Conrad's conception of art as a whole, reassessing the over-discussed statement in which the author asserts his desire to make the reader "see, " and establishing a difference between "seeing" and "seeing, " where the latter refers to a cumulative understanding that encompasses all of the senses. Chapter three troubles the reliability of sonic epistemic structures, demonstrating that Dickens uses the more deceptive qualities of sound in order to maintain suspense and interest over the extended periods of time necessitated by serialized publication. Together, these chapters move towards an understanding of the sonic dimension as important not only to the action of a narrative, but to the very narrativity of the Victorian novel.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Molyneux, Frances Victoria |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Woloch, Alex, 1970- |
| Thesis advisor | Woloch, Alex, 1970- |
| Thesis advisor | Algee-Hewitt, Mark |
| Thesis advisor | Vermeule, Blakey |
| Degree committee member | Algee-Hewitt, Mark |
| Degree committee member | Vermeule, Blakey |
| Associated with | Stanford University, English Department |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Frances Victoria Molyneux. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the English Department. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/gv871zx3028 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Frances Victoria Molyneux
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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