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The 'disembodied voice' in fin-de-siècle British literature : its genealogy and significances
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Muto, Hiroshi (2001) The 'disembodied voice' in fin-de-siècle British literature : its genealogy and significances. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1377464~S15
Abstract
A particular kind of voice recurs in fin-de-siècle British literature.
It is a voice without a human body, a voice whose source is either
invisible or non-human. This study explores the historical factors
underlying the literary representation of such a voice.
Chapter 1 examines Arthur Symons' phrase, 'the disembodied voice
of a human soul,' and sets up the context for the subsequent discussion
by teasing out the four major implications of the fin-de-siècle
disembodied voice: the socio-political, the aesthetico-linguistic, the
techno-scientific, and the sexual-somatic. Chapter 2 first outlines the
modern origin of the disembodied voice in the Gothic-Romantic culture
of the late eighteenth century, where the frequent description of the
disembodied voice is linked to the rise of the nostalgia for premodernity;
the chapter then analyzes the disembodied voice in Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness both in terms of Gothic culture and of the
fin-de-siècle situation. The Romantic aesthetico-linguistic
prioritization of the aural-oral, which we call 'melocentricism,' the
fin-de-siècle consumerism and colonialism, and the then influential
scientific concept of ether receive scrutiny. Chapter 3 addresses Oscar
Wilde's Salome. Apart from the factors that this play shares with
Conrad's novella, the disembodied voice in Salome secretly expresses a
longing for the homosexual-cum-communal.
Chapter 4 explores the fin-de-siècle imperial and homosexual
implications, and the 'melocentric' pre-history, of the phonographic
voice in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Chapter 5 teases out the hidden
political dimension of the technological voice, phonographic and
wireless, in Kipling's Kim and '"Wireless".' Chapter 6 compares the
fin-de-siècle voice with an instance of the early twentieth-century, the
wireless voice in D. H. Lawrence's Ladv Chatterley's Lover, a voice now
involved in the global network of broadcasting. It is concluded that
the disembodied voice is inseparable from important aspects of fin-de-siècle
British culture as well as the question of modernity.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PR English literature | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Voice in literature, Ghosts in literature, Soul in literature, English literature -- 19th century | ||||
Official Date: | March 2001 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Bell, Michael, 1941- | ||||
Extent: | 411 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
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