A series of disruptive, unnerving sounds haunts the fictional writings of Franz Kafka. These include the painful squeak in Gregor Samsa's voice, the indeterminate whistling of Josefine the singer, the relentless noise in "The Burrow," and telephonic disturbances in The Castle. In Kafka and Noise, Kata Gellen applies concepts and vocabulary from film theory to Kafka's works in order to account for these unsettling sounds. Rather than try to decode these noises, Gellen explores the complex role they play in Kafka's larger project.
Kafka and Noise offers a method for pursuing intermedial research in the humanities—namely, via the productive "misapplication" of theoretical tools, which exposes the contours, conditions, and expressive possibilities of the media in question. This book will be of interest to scholars of modernism, literature, cinema, and sound, as well as to anyone wishing to explore how artistic and technological media shape our experience of the world and the possibilities for representing it.
Author(s): Kata Gellen
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: xi, 250
City: Evanston
Tags: Kafka, Franz, 1883–1924 -- Criticism and interpretation; Noise in literature; Sound in motion pictures; German Literary Criticism; Modernism Literary Criticism; Movie History -- Criticism
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Abbreviations and Translations......Page 12
Chapter 1. Dreaming in Sound: Listening to Kafka Cinematically......Page 16
Chapter 2. Acts of Listening in Silent Media: Implied Sound in Kafka and Early Film......Page 52
Chapter 3. The Vocal Supplement: Recitation in Kafka and the Advent of Sound Film......Page 98
Chapter 4. Metaleptic Noise: Acousmatic Nondiegetic Sound in Kafka and Film......Page 152
Epilogue: A Modernist Epistemology of Literary Sound......Page 212
Notes......Page 218
Bibliography......Page 250
Index......Page 260
