Remembering and the Sound of Words: Mallarmé, Proust, Joyce, Beckett - Hardcover

Piette, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198182686 ISBN 13: 9780198182689

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1996

Synopsis

Remembering the Sound of Words is a major new studyof four of modern literature's most important writers--and the first serious attempt to account for complex sound effects in prose

Adam Piette establishes fascinating new links between such sound effects and the representation of memory in literary texts. He sets out a workable taxonomy of sound-repetitions in prose and formulates, throught a theory of alternating-devices, the ways in which the reader's attention is drawn to the acoustic surface of the text. Through close analysis of Mallarmé's prose-poetry, Proust's musical syntax, Joyce's memory-rhymes (from the Portrait of the Artist through Ulysses to Finegan's Wake), and Beckett's prose and drama, Piette demonstrates that sound effects act as intricate reminders of memory-traces in the text. Despite wide divergence in these four writers' representations of memory, the book shows that the use of this memory-rhyme technique is common to them all, and is emplyed in particular to express the textual migration of past key-words, self-centred comic tyranny, and the fitful unifaction of body and memory within the narrative voice. Mimesis is redefined in terms of textual rhymes--facsimiles of the complex resemblances, fusions, and re-enactments of the mind's verbal memory.

About this title

About the Author

Adam Piette is Lecturer in Modern English Literature at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

From the Back Cover

Remembering and the Sound of Words is a major new study of four of modern literature's most important writers - and the first serious attempt to account for complex sound effects in prose. Adam Piette establishes fascinating new links between such sound effects and the representation of memory in literary texts. He sets out a workable taxonomy of sound-repetitions in prose and formulates, through a theory of alerting-devices, the ways in which the reader's attention is drawn to the acoustic surface of the text. Through close analysis of Mallarme's prose-poetry, Proust's musical syntax, Joyce's memory-rhymes (from Portrait of the Artist through Ulysses to Finnegans Wake), and Beckett's prose and drama, Piette demonstrates that sound effects act as intricate reminders of memory-traces in the text. Despite wide divergence in these four writers' representations of memory, the book shows that the use of this memory-rhyme technique is common to them all, and is employed in particular to express the textual migration of past key-words, self-centred comic tyranny, and the fitful unification of body and memory within the narrative voice. Mimesis is redefined in terms of textual rhymes - facsimiles of the complex resemblances, fusions, and reenactments of the mind's verbal memory.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198182686
• ISBN 13: 9780198182689
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 294