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Dissertation Compiled AudioTextual: Modernism, Sound Recordings, and Networks of Reception Brandon Michael Walsh Newport News, Virginia Bachelor of Arts with Distinction, University of Virginia, 2009 Master of Arts, University of Virginia, 2011 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Virginia May 2016 i Abstract Recent studies of the relationship between literary modernism and mass culture have focused on print and periodical forms as evidence of modernism’s deep and complex engagement with both its narrow circle of initiates and a wider audience. But print was not the only mode in which its audience received and reacted to these difficult works of literature: authors often recorded readings in their own voices years or even decades later, and these recordings offered new opportunities for listeners to engage with the materials. AudioTextual aims to reorient the conversation around literary modernism towards this often heard but little discussed audio archive by examining how Anglo- American modernists engaged with new devices for sound recording and the threats and opportunities these media offered for community, the page, and the embodied voice. The project at once shows the still unrecognized extent of the modernist encounter with new technologies of sound and listens closely to audio recordings of modernist works as they form a network of modernist distribution and reception that transcends accounts limited by genre and nation. My work examines sound recording and Anglo-American literary modernism through re-readings of key texts and close listenings of recordings by James Joyce, Langston Hughes, Virginia Woolf, and amateur readers of the same. By re-reading classic audible moments from modernist works in light of how these recordings reached and were consumed by audiences, the project argues for literary modernism as a sounded, social phenomenon that continues to echo to this day. ii Acknowledgements I often joked that I would use this space to thank my sofa for its years of support, but the truth is that I am overwhelmed by the amount of gratitude I feel as this project reaches its culmination. My first and deepest thanks go to my dissertation committee: Michael Levenson, who has been the kindest and most generous mentor and friend that anyone could imagine; Jahan Ramazani, who always pushed further and asked for more; Rita Felski, whose crisp prose and clear thinking I will always admire; and Michael Puri, whose theoretical rigor and good humor I found just in time. I have been deeply fortunate to have had a number of other life-changing mentors at UVA. Paul Neebe and John D’earth taught me lessons on music I will be working through for the rest of my life. Jennifer Wicke, Victoria Olwell, Steve Arata, and Lisa Russ Spaar heard the first soundings of this work and lit the fire in me that has driven me until this day. Wayne Graham, Purdom Lindblad, Jeremy Boggs, Bethany Nowviskie, and the entire Scholars’ Lab in the UVA Library offered profound guidance and support. During the course of my writing, Andrew Stauffer and James Seitz provided valuable professional opportunities and were compassionately flexible when I needed it most. Annie Galvin, Sarah Storti, Gretchen York, and Anne Llewellyn heard all these arguments and read most of these pages, and my writing is better for it. I could not ask for more wonderful critics, colleagues, and friends. This work has benefited from a number of other voices over the years. Sean Latham and an anonymous reviewer at the James Joyce Quarterly provided valuable iii feedback on material that would develop into an article from the first chapter. Though, at the time of this writing, this article has not yet been published, the James Joyce Quarterly is considered the organ of first publication for the material that will eventually come to be published in their pages as “The Joycean Record: Listening Patterns and Sound Coteries.” The James Joyce Quarterly also retains copyright of this contribution. Victor Luftig gave insightful comments on material from my master’s thesis that I would eventually incorporate into my first and third chapters. Eric Rochester has been endlessly giving of his time in helping to develop the digital project that I describe in chapter three. The British Library and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library provided access to rare materials used throughout the project. All of my students have, in one way or another, found their way into my work here, and I am especially grateful to those who, along with me, participated in moving conversations during the Culture of London program with Karen Chase, Clare Kinney, Jon Readey, and Margaret Rennix. I am especially grateful to the Raven Society, the Society of Fellows, and the Scholars’ Lab for the research and fellowship support they have provided. My endless thanks go to my close friends, who have been profoundly supportive during this undertaking. Gregory Weaver and Peter Cobos continue to be steadfast inspirations and musical collaborators no matter how much distance lies between us. Brendan Sullivan and Brennan Lowery have been guiding lights and sympathetic ears during many long phone conversations. Sterling Elmore, Dina Samsanov, Xiao Wang, and Amanda Bowers have remained as important to me now as they were when we all lived together. Dana Wheeles, Rebecca Levy, and Ethan Reed all kept me going when I iv was ready to stop. Elizabeth Ott, Courtney Fay, Michael Gonyar, Hector, Tony, and Nala all suffered through my endless singing around the house. My family has been devotedly, loyal even as I frustrated their attempts to explain what I do to skeptical friends. Thank you Amy, Lori, and Rodney; Bryce, Bradley, Brayden, Blake, and Kayleigh. My parents, Michael and Nan, have taught me more about what it means to live and love than they will ever know. Thank you for your endless encouragement. Last and deepest, I thank Elizabeth Fox, my co-teacher and co- conspirator, for her love and laughter. You’ve changed everything here. This is for all of you. v Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ...............................................................................................................v Audiotextual Criticism / Audiotextual Modernism .......................................................1 The Joycean Record: Listening Patterns and Sound Coteries ...................................19 Sound Thinking: Ulysses as Audio Archive .........................................................21 “Sirens” and Gramophonic Listening Patterns .....................................................33 The Gramophone and the Listening Coterie .........................................................45 LibriVox and the Recording Coterie .....................................................................57 Life Through Listening .........................................................................................68 Hughes’s Audiences: Blues, Jazz, and the Performed Poem ......................................70 Blues, the Self, Narrative ......................................................................................74 Big Band Jazz and the Space of Encounter ..........................................................89 Hughes and the Underdog: Improvisation and Hipster Aesthetics .....................101 Audiotextuality and a Poetics of Performance ....................................................120 Woolf and the Broken Groove: The Textual Record and Technologies of Sound Reproduction .................................................................................................................133 Septimus and the Sound of Disturbance .............................................................136 Breaking Records ................................................................................................149 Hearing Voices in The Hours .............................................................................162 vi The Quotation Mark and Hearing the Text .........................................................173 The Textual Record .............................................................................................187 Coda: Audiotextual Writing and Digital Humanities ...............................................189 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................196 1 Audiotextual Criticism / Audiotextual Modernism On several occasions throughout his life, T.S. Eliot found himself faced with a microphone as he prepared to record readings of The Waste Land in his own voice. The poem, notorious now for its thorny manuscript history, undergoes a new transformation in the instant that Eliot reads it aloud. What, moments before, had existed as print in hand or as verse in mind becomes something more as Eliot interprets the poem into a spoken performance that gets captured as reproducible sound. The content of this recording cannot be said to be exclusively audible: the origins of the event are in a printed text, after all, and it now exists as data inscribed in a particular format. Even clearer is that the artifact in question cannot be described
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