| This dissertation begins with two simple observations: noise is everywhere in modernist literature, and it is a distraction, a disturbance, and a threat. One can easily posit an historical link between these points: modernity is noisy, and sooner or later sensory experience begins to impinge upon literary consciousness. Context becomes content. But this explanation does not account for the power and fascination of noise. The fact that it becomes a central and positive---or at least ambivalent---feature of fiction and autobiography means that it is not merely an unwanted intrusion. What exactly does noise bring to literature? All sound issuing from humans, animals, nature and machines which cannot be classified as language or music, even if it bears some relation to these systems of acoustic expression, qualifies as noise. Modernist noise thus includes such acoustic phenomena as rattling engines and ringing telephones, as well as a cock's crow, a baby's babble, and the rush of a waterfall---in so far as they are incorporated into the literary text. The problem for writers and critics is that these sounds resist attempts at schematization and inscription. The conclusion is not that noise is decidedly unliterary, but rather that the very challenges it poses to literary writing should be the topic of investigation. With the help of a range of theoretical models and historical insights, this dissertation explores the productive relationship between noise and narrative. Its central argument---that certain texts rely on unrepresentable acoustic experiences to enact and describe the conditions and consequences of their emergence---offers a new reading of auditory perception and acoustic experience in German modernism.;The first part of the dissertation tells the story of the birth of modernist narrative out of noise. By tracing the relationship of "Stimme" (voice) to "Stimmung" (mood) in Robert Musil's works and the acoustic foundation of imagination in Rainer Maria Rilke's novel, I demonstrate the central role of noise in the production of literary and mental states. Part Two examines the inexplicable sounds and creaturely voices that populate the works of Franz Kafka, arguing that noise presents an insurmountable but necessary obstacle to narrative development. Additionally, noise is a key philosophical figure, as it enables reflection on solitary life and the nature of community, the two poles that mark out the space of Kafka's precarious existence. The third part of the dissertation examines the role of acoustic experience in the autobiographical works of Walter Benjamin and Elias Canetti. For them, the auditory world of the child---defined by acts of mishearing, misunderstanding and incomprehension---is the basis upon which the adult writer forges his relationship to language. They inscribe the distorted remnants of infantile hearing in order to reflect the genesis of the writer.;Precisely because it is an irritant and a disturbance, noise proves to be an indispensable element of modernist writing. In the works under consideration, beginnings and endings, spatial and temporal coordinates, and characters, events and plot structures hinge on the presence of sounds that have no fixed meanings, but discernible functions. This dissertation examines modernist literature's fundamental reliance on a class of sounds which might appear to be acoustic refuse or excess, but which in fact enables self-reflection in the form of acoustic images and figures, as well as theories of sound and voice. |
