On the Colors of Vowels - Thinking Through Synesthesia

On the Colors of Vowels investigates the nineteenth-century emergence of discourses attributing visual properties (color, brightness) to vowels in linguistics, poetics, acoustics, opera, and experimental psychology.

List of contents

Introduction: After "Voyelles" | 1

1 Klangfarbe: Vowels in Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone | 21

2 The Interaction of Color | 49

3 Mallarmé and the Tension of Timbre | 65

4 The Colors of the Universal Alphabet | 84

5 L'être imaginaire: Saussure's Colored Vowels | 103

Conclusion: Remarks on "Synesthesia" | 121

Acknowledgments | 141

Notes | 143

Works Cited | 185

Index | 203

About the author

Liesl Yamaguchi

Summary

On the Colors of Vowels investigates the nineteenth-century emergence of discourses attributing visual properties (color, brightness) to vowels in linguistics, poetics, acoustics, opera, and experimental psychology.

Product details

• Authors: Liesl Yamaguchi
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 07.01.2025
• EAN: 9781531509040
• ISBN: 978-1-5315-0904-0
• No. of pages: 277
• Series: Verbal Arts: Studies in Poetics
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies