Sounding Bodies - Acoustical Science and Musical Erotics in Victorian Literature

Can the concert hall be as erotic as the bedroom? Many Victorian writers believed so. In the mid-nineteenth century, acoustical scientists such as Hermann von Helmholtz and John Tyndall described music as a set of physical vibrations that tickled the ear, excited the nerves, and precipitated muscular convulsions. In turn, writers-from canonical figures such as George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, to New Women novelists like Sarah Grand and Bertha Thomas, to anonymous authors of underground pornography-depicted bodily sensations and experiences in unusually explicit ways. These writers used scenes of music listening and performance to intervene in urgent conversations about gender and sexuality and explore issues of agency, pleasure, violence, desire, and kinship. Sounding Bodies shows how both classical music and Victorian literature, while often considered bastions of conservatism and repression, represented powerful sites for feminist and queer politics.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships Open Book Program-a limited competition designed to make outstanding humanities books available to a wide audience. Learn more at the Fellowships Open Book Program at : https://www.neh.gov/grants/odh/FOBP/, and access the book online at the SUNY Open Access Repository at https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/14996
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About the author

Shannon Draucker is Associate Professor of English at Siena College.

Product details

• Authors: Shannon Draucker
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 02.01.2025
• EAN: 9781438498409
• ISBN: 978-1-4384-9840-9
• No. of pages: 294
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 229 mm x 25 mm
• Series: SUNY Press Open Access; SUNY series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Music, History: specific events & topics, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies, MUSIC / History & Criticism, SCIENCE / Acoustics & Sound, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century, Ireland, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, History of Music, Literature: history & criticism, Gender studies, gender groups, Music reviews & criticism, Wave mechanics (vibration & acoustics), Music reviews and criticism, Literature: history and criticism, Wave mechanics (vibration and acoustics)