Description
Book SynopsisThis study investigates how the medium of sound and its most representative art form of music enable Virginia Woolf to develop fresh concepts and methods in her experimental fiction.
Trade Review"Clements’s book explores Woolf’s sustained attention to the production and reception of sound, gathering together arguments about sonic events, art music, and language in Woolf’s work. Through her bold scope, astute close readings, and careful theoretical expositions, she provides a sophisticated account of the vital importance of sound production and reception to Woolf’s ethics and experimentation." -- Emma Sutton *
Woolf Studies Annual *
"Elicia Clements in Virginia Woolf, Music, Sound and Language (2019) takes a deep dive into these relationships and argues that the concepts of sound and music enabled Woolf to develop a new understanding of her own writing and literature. This is new and exciting." -- Patricia Laurence, City College, City University of New York *
Virginia Woolf Miscellany *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction I. Woolf's Musical Ear II. Interdisciplinary Methods III. "Hoity te, hoity te, hoity te …": Tripartite Woolf Part 1 An Emerging Earcon: Woolf's Singers 1. Finding a Voice I. Resonant Beginnings: The Voyage Out II. Sonic Networks in Jacob's Room III. Urban and Rural Interrelations in Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse 2. The Earcon Reproduces I. "And what is a cry?": The Waves II. Integrating the Earcon in The Years III. Aural Multiplicity in Between the Acts Part 2 Profound Listening and Acousmatics 3. Initial Apperceptions I. Materialized Sonics and Listening Subjects in The Voyage Out II. Involuntary, Yet Profound, Listening in Night and Day III. International Acousmatics: War and Its Veterans in Jacob's Room and Mrs. Dalloway 4. Bodies and Voices I. To the Lighthouse and Family Acousmatics II. The Gender of Listening in The Waves III. "Hush!... Somebody's listening": The Years IV. Heterogeneous Reattachments in Between the Acts Part 3 Music as Performance in Woolf's Fiction 5. Performing Women I. Women at the Piano in the First Three Novels II. Performing Personal History in The Years III. Historical Reenactments: Between the Acts 6. The Performativity of Language: The Waves Musicalized I. Word Music: "(The rhythm is the main thing in writing)" II. The Case of Ludwig van Beethoven III. Transforming Beethoven's Opus 130 and 133 into Words Coda: A Meditation on Rhythm Notes Works Cited Index
