Sounding the novel
Subtitle: voice in twenty-first century American fiction
By: Nathalie Aghoro
Series: American studies : a mongraph series -- volume 294; American studies (Munich, Germany) -- v. 294.
Publisher: Universitätsverlag Winter
Published: 2018
Place of publication: Heidelberg
Language: eng
Number of pages: 258
ISBN-13: 9783825369163
Subjects: Voice in literature; American fiction; History and criticism; Extremely loud & incredibly close (Foer, Jonathan Safran)
Description: "Sounding the Novel investigates how American fiction in the early twenty-first century registers the sonic mediality of voice. It looks at ways in which novels enlist the reader's auditory imagination to establish literary soundscapes where the sound of a voice becomes the main driver for the development of the story and for narrative experimentation. With its focus on novels written after 2000 by Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Jennifer Egan, this study examines the aesthetic and discursive investment in the acoustics of voice as a constitutive part of contemporary literary imaginaries. Drawing on literary theory, sound studies, and philosophy of voice, Sounding the Novel discusses how written representations of vocal expression explore the socio-cultural functions of its resonance and its material impact as a corporeal medium in the context of U.S. auditory cultures."--Back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-258).
Table of contents: title: Introduction: listening as literary practice; title: Sounding voices; title: The scream and the word: (non)human voices in Richard Powers' The echo maker; title: Singing time: vocal performance and temporality in Richard Powers' The time of our singing; title: Listening for voice; title: Polyphonic soundscapes: vocal resonance and place in Karen Tei Yamashita's I hotel; title: A listening self: vocal sound event and intersubjectivity in Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely loud and incredibly close; title: By way of conclusion: silence in Jennifer Egan's A visit from the goon squad.