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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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 or Dissertation (PhD)
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:	Date Event March 2001 Submitted
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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