Research Catalog

Eardrums : literary modernism as sonic warfare

Title
Eardrums : literary modernism as sonic warfare / Tyler Whitney.
Author
Whitney, Tyler
Publication
  • Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2019.
  • ©2019

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library JFE 19-7075Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description
x, 219 pages : illustrations; 23 cm
Summary
"In this innovative study, Tyler Whitney demonstrates how a transformation and militarization of the civilian soundscape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries left indelible traces on the literature that defined the period. Both formally and thematically, the modernist aesthetics of Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, Detlev von Liliencron, and Peter Altenberg drew on this blurring of martial and civilian soundscapes in traumatic and performative repetitions of war. At the same time, Richard Huelsenbeck assaulted audiences in Zurich with his "sound poems," which combined references to World War I, colonialism, and violent encounters in urban spaces with nonsensical utterances and linguistic detritus--all accompanied by the relentless beating of a drum on the stage of the Cabaret Voltaire. "Eardrums" is the first book-length study to explore the relationship between acoustical modernity and German modernism, charting a literary and cultural history written in and around the eardrum. The result is not only a new way of understanding the sonic impulses behind key literary texts from the period. It also outlines an entirely new approach to the study of literature as as the interaction of text and sonic practice, voice and noise, which will be of interest to scholars across literary studies, media theory, sound studies, and the history of science"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects
Genre/Form
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Introduction. Writing sound across the modernist divide: phonography, acoustical embodiment, and the tympanic regime -- Liliencron, captain of the nineteenth century: naturalism as martial phonography -- Bringing the war home: tympanic transductions from the battlefield to Fin-de-siècle Vienna -- Drumming literature into the ground: Dada's tympanic regime -- Toward a modernist ear: Robert Musil and the poetics of acoustic space -- Into the inaudible: sound and imperception in Kafka's late writings -- Conclusion: Nazi soundscapes and their reverberation in postwar culture.
Call Number
JFE 19-7075
ISBN
  • 9780810140219
  • 0810140217
  • 9780810140226
  • 0810140225
LCCN
2019005602
OCLC
1050363502
Author
Whitney, Tyler, author.
Title
Eardrums : literary modernism as sonic warfare / Tyler Whitney.
Publisher
Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2019.
Copyright Date
©2019
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Chronological Term
1800-1999
Research Call Number
JFE 19-7075
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