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Sounding bodies and voices in nineteenth-century British and American Gothic fiction.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Sounding bodies and voices in nineteenth-century British and American Gothic fiction./
Author:	Schlauraff, Kristie Ann.
Description:	1 online resource (190 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 78-04(E), Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International78-04A(E).
Subject:	British & Irish literature. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9781369343908

Sounding bodies and voices in nineteenth-century British and American Gothic fiction.
Schlauraff, Kristie Ann.

Sounding bodies and voices in nineteenth-century British and American Gothic fiction. - 1 online resource (190 pages)

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 78-04(E), Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)

Includes bibliographical references

This item is not available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.

When George Du Maurier's infamous mesmerist Svengali performs on his elastic penny whistle, the instrument produces a sound "more human almost than the human voice itself." The suggestion that a voice could be more, or conversely less, human calls attention to the precariousness of a category under threat in the nineteenth century. My project confronts the enigmatic nature of voices in transatlantic Gothic fiction in relation to definitions of the human, attending to figures that frustrate taxonomic classification in sonic as well as visual terms. Discussions of stethoscopic listening, physiognomy, vivisection, and mesmerism in Britain and the United States frame my chapters, underscoring a nineteenth-century preoccupation with embodiment foundational for both literary and medical knowledge. Through an analysis of bodies as soundscapes in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H.G. Wells, among others, my project discovers an attention to voice as a recalcitrant force that subverts scientific authority over bodies. Michel Foucault's The Birth of the Clinic famously establishes the authoritative gaze as rendering bodies knowable, but I contend that the audible world remained a contested and occulted space that resisted classification. Sound was central to nineteenth-century investigations of the human.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2018

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9781369343908Subjects--Topical Terms:

1148425
British & Irish literature.
Index Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Sounding bodies and voices in nineteenth-century British and American Gothic fiction.
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100 1 $a Schlauraff, Kristie Ann. $3 1181635
245 1 0 $a Sounding bodies and voices in nineteenth-century British and American Gothic fiction.
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300 $a 1 online resource (190 pages)
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500 $a Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 78-04(E), Section: A.
500 $a Adviser: Shirley Samuels.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.) $c Cornell University $d 2017.
504 $a Includes bibliographical references
506 $a This item is not available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
520 $a When George Du Maurier's infamous mesmerist Svengali performs on his elastic penny whistle, the instrument produces a sound "more human almost than the human voice itself." The suggestion that a voice could be more, or conversely less, human calls attention to the precariousness of a category under threat in the nineteenth century. My project confronts the enigmatic nature of voices in transatlantic Gothic fiction in relation to definitions of the human, attending to figures that frustrate taxonomic classification in sonic as well as visual terms. Discussions of stethoscopic listening, physiognomy, vivisection, and mesmerism in Britain and the United States frame my chapters, underscoring a nineteenth-century preoccupation with embodiment foundational for both literary and medical knowledge. Through an analysis of bodies as soundscapes in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H.G. Wells, among others, my project discovers an attention to voice as a recalcitrant force that subverts scientific authority over bodies. Michel Foucault's The Birth of the Clinic famously establishes the authoritative gaze as rendering bodies knowable, but I contend that the audible world remained a contested and occulted space that resisted classification. Sound was central to nineteenth-century investigations of the human.
520 $a In the texts I examine, characters confront the sonic qualities of corporeal beings, which challenge them to listen in unconventional ways. Although the listening practices necessary to interpret these qualities are often disorienting, they enable characters to recognize networks of influence that reshape the conditions of embodiment, which had become what William A. Cohen describes as the "untranscendable horizon of the human." These connections offer the possibility of meaningful interaction yet simultaneously endanger the listener. In the unsettled realm of Gothic fiction, sound is framed as a force that can both empower and disempower bodies as it circulates within and between them. Establishing a new awareness of bodies as soundscapes in their own right, Sounding Bodies and Voices elucidates how Gothic works draw on nineteenth- century scientific practices to reimagine the contours of the human.
533 $a Electronic reproduction. $b Ann Arbor, Mich. : $c ProQuest, $d 2018
538 $a Mode of access: World Wide Web
650 4 $a British & Irish literature. $3 1148425
650 4 $a American literature. $3 685398
655 7 $a Electronic books. $2 local $3 554714
690 $a 0593
690 $a 0591
710 2 $a ProQuest Information and Learning Co. $3 1178819
710 2 $a Cornell University. $b English Language & Literature. $3 1181636
773 0 $t Dissertation Abstracts International $g 78-04A(E).
856 4 0 $u http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=10195525 $z click for full text (PQDT)