Sensorial Aesthetics: Cross-Modal Stylistics in Modernist Fiction

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.10.18

Keywords:

modernism, sensorial aesthetics, cross-modal iconicity, senses

Abstract

This article argues that modernist fiction pointedly involves all our senses as part of its reaction to the project of modernity and progress, as well as to Victorian realism; it is not just a response to a heighted sensibility towards new soundscapes, new perceptions of motion and new olfactory experiences in the aftermath of industrialization and modernization. This “rebellion” involves a shift of focus from outer, rational and objective reality to inner, irrational and subjective consciousness, which drives the emphasis on emotional and sensational experience. The article suggests that in light of recent important developments in cognitive, psychological and neurological research, as well as in affect studies and intermedial and multimodal studies, there is reason to revise modernist stylistics. This could predominantly be done within the theoretical field and taxonomy of intermediality, as proposed by Lars Elleström. The latter half of the article discusses some textual modernist samples to more convincingly establish a theory of modernist sensorial aesthetics.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Niklas Salmose, Linnaeus University, Sweden

Niklas Salmose is Associate Professor of Literatures in English at Linnaeus University. He is currently Vice-Chair of the Department of Languages and the Programme Coordinator for the Master’s programme in English Language and Literature. He has published and presented internationally on nostalgia, Nordic noir, Hitchcock, cinematic style in fiction, modernism, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Anthropocene and Hollywood, animal horror, intermediality and sensorial aesthetics in fiction. Recent editorships include an issue on the Anthropocene for the journal Ekfrase (2016), a special issue on contemporary nostalgia for the journal Humanities (2018), a volume titled Transmediations. Communication across Media Borders for Routledge (2019) and a book on experimental Swedish filmmaker Eric M. Nilsson (2019). He is a member of the Linnaeus University Centre of Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS).

References

Ahlner, Felix, and Jordan Zlatev. “Cross-Modal Iconicity: A Cognitive Semiotic Approach to Sound Symbolism.” Sign Systems Studies 38.1 (2010): 298–348. Print. https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2010.38.1-4.11
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2010.38.1-4.11

Bäckström, Per. “Suspicion in the Ear.” Sense and Senses in Aesthetics. Ed. Per Bäckström and Troels Degn Johansson. Gothenburg: NSU, 2003. 96–114. Print.
Google Scholar

Bruhn, Jørgen. “Intermedialitet: Framtidens Humanistiska Grunddisciplin?” Tidsskrift för litteraturvetenskap 1 (2008): 21–39. Print.
Google Scholar

Bucknell, Brad. Literary Modernism and Musical Aesthetics: Pater, Pound, Joyce and Stein. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.
Google Scholar

Bullock, Marcus. “Bad Company: On the Theory of Literary Modernity and Melancholy in Walter Benjamin and Julia Kristeva.” Boundary 22.3 (1995): 59–79. Print. https://doi.org/10.2307/303723
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/303723

Calvert, Gemma, Charles Spence, and Barry E. Stein. The Handbook of Multisensory Processes. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2004. Print.
Google Scholar

Carroll, Noël. “Art, Narrative, and Emotion.” Emotion and the Arts. Ed. Mette Hjort and Sue Laver. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. 190–211. Print.
Google Scholar

Cather, Willa. O Pioneers! New York: Dover, 1993. Print.
Google Scholar

Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim: A Romance. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1905. Print.
Google Scholar

Conrad, Joseph. The Nigger of Narcissus: A Tale of the Sea. New York: Doubleday, 1935. Print.
Google Scholar

Crangle, Sara. “Phenomenology and Affect: Modernist Sulking.” A Handbook for Modernist Studies. Ed. Jean‐Michel Rabaté. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2013. 327–45. Print. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118488638.ch19
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118488638.ch19

Danius, Sara. The Senses of Modernism: Technology, Perception, and Aesthetics. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2002. Print.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501721168

Delville, Michel. Food, Poetry, and the Aesthetics of Consumption: Eating the Avant-Garde. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.
Google Scholar

De Sousa, Ronald. “Fetishism and Objectivity in Aesthetic Emotion.” Emotion and the Arts. Ed. Mette Hjort and Sue Laver. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. 177–89. Print.
Google Scholar

Elleström, Lars. “Bridging the Gap Between Image and Metaphor Through Cross-Modal Iconicity: An Interdisciplinary Model.” Dimensions of Iconicity. Ed. Angelika Zirker, Matthias Bauer, Olga Fischer and Christina Ljungberg. Amsterdam: John Benjamin’s, 2017. 167–90. Print. https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.15.10ell
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.15.10ell

Elleström, Lars. “Identifying, Construing, and Bridging over Media Borders.” Scripta Uniandrade 16.3 (2018): 15–30. Print. https://doi.org/10.5935/1679-5520.20180043
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.5935/1679-5520.20180043

Elleström, Lars. “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations.” Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality. Ed. Lars Elleström. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 11–48. Print. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230275201_2
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230275201_2

Elleström, Lars. “Transfer of Media Characteristics among Dissimilar Media.” Palabra Clave 20.3 (2017): 663–85. Print. https://doi.org/10.5294/pacla.2017.20.3.4
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pacla.2017.20.3.4

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. London: Vintage, 1995. Print.
Google Scholar

Figlerowicz, Marta. “Affect Theory Dossier. An Introduction.” Qui Parle 20.2 (2012): 3–18. Print. https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.20.2.0003
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.20.2.0003

Forceville, Charles. “Non-Verbal and Multimodal Metaphor in a Cognitvist Framework: Agendas for Research.” Multimodal Metaphor. Ed. Charles Forceville and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009. 19–42. Print. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110215366
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110215366

Frattarola, Angela. “Developing an Ear for the Modernist Novel: Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson and James Joyce.” Journal of Modern Literature 33.1 (2009): 132–53. Print. https://doi.org/10.2979/JML.2009.33.1.132
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2979/JML.2009.33.1.132

Garrington, Abbie. Haptic Modernism: Touch and the Tactile in Modernist Writing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2013. Print. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641741.001.0001
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641741.001.0001

Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. London: Arrow, 1994. Print.
Google Scholar

Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York: Garland,1984. Print.
Google Scholar

Lowry, Malcolm. Under the Volcano. London: Penguin, 1947. Print.
Google Scholar

Lyons, William. “On Looking into Titian’s Assumption.” Emotion and the Arts. Ed. Mette Hjort and Sue Laver. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. 139–56. Print.
Google Scholar

Mahaffey, Vicki. “Streams Beyond Consciousness: Stylistic Immediacy in the Modernist Novel.” A Handbook for Modernist Studies. A Handbook for Modernist Studies. Ed. Jean‐Michel Rabaté. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2013. 35–54. Print. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118488638.ch2
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118488638.ch2

Martino, Gail, and Lawrence E. Marks. “Cross-Modal Interaction between Vision and Touch: The Role of Synesthetic Correspondence.” Perception 29 (2000): 745–54. Print. https://doi.org/10.1068/p2984
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1068/p2984

Matravers, Derek. Art and Emotion. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.
Google Scholar

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 1962. Print.
Google Scholar

Ramachandran, Vilayanur S., and Edward M. Hubbard. “Synaesthesia: A Window into Perception, Thought and Language.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8.12 (2001): 3–34. Print.
Google Scholar

Rasula, Jed. “‘Listening to Incense’: Melomania & the Pathos of Emancipation.” Journal of Modern Literature 31.1 (2007): 1–20. Print. https://doi.org/10.2979/JML.2007.31.1.1
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2979/JML.2007.31.1.1

Rindisbacher, Hans J. The Smell of Books: A Cultural-Historical Study of Olfactory Perception in Literature. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1992. Print. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.23363
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.23363

Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Trans. Marion J. Reis. Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Ed. Marion J. Reis. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1965. 3–24. Print.
Google Scholar

Solomon, Robert C. “In Defense of Sentimentality.” Emotion and the Arts. Ed. Mette Hjort and Sue Laver. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. 225–45. Print.
Google Scholar

Taylor, Julie, ed. Modernism and Affect. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2015. Print. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748693252.001.0001
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748693252.001.0001

Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder. London: Penguin Classics, 2008. Print.
Google Scholar

Westling, Louise. “Virginia Woolf and the Flesh of the World.“ New Literary History 30. 4 (1999): 855–75. Print. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.1999.0055
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.1999.0055

Woolf, Virginia. “Modern Fiction.” The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Stuart Nelson Clarke and Andrew McNeillie. London: Hogarth, 1986. 157–65. Print.
Google Scholar

Zender, Karl F. “Faulkner and the Power of Sound.” PMLA 99.1 (1984): 89–108. Print. https://doi.org/10.2307/462037
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/462037

Downloads

Published

2020-11-24

How to Cite

Salmose, N. (2020). Sensorial Aesthetics: Cross-Modal Stylistics in Modernist Fiction. Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, (10), 321–335. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.10.18