Literature as Sound Studies

Literature as Sound Studies identifies literature as a site of sonic invention and reconfiguration, contributing a range of terms, models, and methods for attending to sound. Considering literary works drawn from a range of traditions—from twentieth-century Moroccan poems to early-modern English plays—Literature as Sound Studies brings out the sophisticated ways that literary writers and commentators have used and studied sound. Moving beyond the use of literature as mere ear witness to history, this collection brings out the complexity of sonic figuration in literature and literary studies, suggesting how this attentiveness to sound might anticipate, illuminate, and enrich the contemporary field of sound studies. The very category of the literary, considered as a subset of language writ large, has often hinged on the particular attention that literary works draw to their own sound, whether that sound be psychologically rehearsed, as in silent reading, or acoustically realized, as in a theatrical performance. Weaving together methods and concepts drawn from both literary and sound studies, these essays make legible literature’s complex role in shaping and writing a history of sound.