The Modernist Soundscape: Towards a Theory of the Representation and Perception of Sound in Narrative

While the visual aspects of modernist prose (think of topics such as ‘the gaze’) have always been a focal point for literary critics, their auditory counterparts have all too often been neglected. This trend in literary studies follows a broader one in cultural history, where the eye has dominated the sensorial hierarchy for centuries, obscuring the importance of the other senses. In recent decades, scholars from the eclectic field of sound studies have been successful at demonstrating that the decline of the auditory that is so often thought to accompany the rise of the visual during the Enlightenment and especially in modern times, has been severely overstated. Pointing to the invention of new audio-based media such as the phonograph, the telephone and the radio as well as the introduction of sound in film, all of which served to disembody the human voice (Kittler, Halliday), but also to the growing auditory impact of motorized vehicles (Bijsterveld) and the sirens and shellings of the two World Wars, these scholars stress that if modernity was profoundly visual, it was at least as loud. The ‘I’ of Modernity, one might suggest, was in fact an auditory one. (Connor) Picking up on these claims, a number of literary scholars (Cuddy-Keane, Frattarola, Haslam) have recently tried to show the importance of the auditory dimension of modernist texts. In doing so, however, they encountered a profound lack of terminology and theories to support their analyses, which led them to point out the need for a structural framework for the study of (the representation of) sound in narrative. This dissertation hopes to provide the first steps in establishing such a framework. Building on existing frameworks and vocabulary from fields more versed in dealing with the study of sound, such as sound studies (Schafer, Truax, Augoyard & Torgue) and film narratology (Chion, Jost), the methodological chapter of the dissertation first scrutinizes the visual bias that has seeped into the terminology used in narrative theory, suggesting a reconceptualization of the concept of focalization that introduces ‘auricularization’ (Jost), as well as ‘olfactivization’, ‘ocularization’, ‘tactilivization’ and ‘gustativization’ (Nelles) for the subcategories of focalization pertaining to each of the five senses. This in an effort to counteract the traditional inclination towards the visual (‘who sees?’). Second, an elaborate taxonomy of narrative sound is devised in order to help name, differentiate and analyze various (aspects of) narrative sound. The vocabulary provided is largely based on adaptations and reinterpretations of existing concepts in sound studies. This framework is then applied to a number of prose texts from the modernist period. A first chapter deals with Ford Madox Ford’s tetralogy on The Great War Parade’s End (1924), while a second chapter deals with (part of) the shorter fiction of Virginia Woolf alongside some of her novels: Mrs Dalloway (1925) and Between the Acts (1941). Whereas the chapter on Ford mainly deals with the characteristics of a larger, overarching soundscape, the case-studies found in the chapter on Woolf present closer readings, focusing more on issues of auditory perspective within the narrative (i.e. 'auricularization'), and the structural role of narrative sound. Woolf, it turns out, employs sounds to map both time and space in a process called 'acoustic mapping'. Both Ford and Woolf thus show themselves exemplary of the augmented attention to sound in the period, which finds itself reflected in the importance of the narrative soundscapes these modernist prose writers. If we are to read modernist narratives, then, we must henceforth not only look, but listen as well.status: publishe