Vibratory Modernism

by Enns, Anthony; Trower, Shelley

• ISBN13: 9781137027245
• ISBN10: 113702724X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-07-19
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Vibratory Modernism is a collection of original essays that will enable scholars and students to explore how vibrations provided a means of bridging science and art – two fields that became increasingly separate over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book demonstrates the vital role played by vibrations in the fields of physics, physiology, spiritualism, and by new vibratory technologies, in helping to shape the way modernist art was made and viewed. The chapters are placed into three connecting parts focusing on literature, the visual arts and theatre, each part highlighting the diverse ways in which writers, artists and performers engaged with the fascinating world of vibrations.

Author Biography

Anthony Enns is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. His work has appeared in such journals as The Senses and Society, Screen, and Culture, Theory & Critique. He is also co-editor of the book, Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008).

Shelley Trower is a Lecturer in English at the University of Roehampton, UK. Publications include Senses of Vibration (Continuum, 2012), Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity, co-edited with Marion Gibson and Garry Tregidga (Routledge, 2012), and Place, Writing, and Voice in Oral History (Palgrave, 2011).

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. From Vibratory Occultism to Vibratory Modernism: Blackwood, Lawrence, Woolf; Justin Sausman
2. 'A Sinister Resonance': Vibration, Sound, and the Birth of Conrad's Marlow; Julie Napolin
3. Physics as Narrative: Lewis, Pound and the London Vortex; Andrew Logemann
4. Throbbing Human Engines: Mechanical Vibration, Entropy and Death in Marinetti, Joyce, Ehrenburg and Eliot; Matthew Wraith
5. Materializing the Medium: Ectoplasm and the Quest for Supra-Normal Biology in Fin-de-Siècle Science and Art; Robert Michael Brain
6. A Sense and Essence of Nature: Wave Patterns in the Paintings of František Kupka; John G. Hatch
7. Ether Machines: Raoul Hausmann's Optophonetic Media; Arndt Niebisch
8. Vibratory Photography; Anthony Enns
9. Good Vibrations: Avant-Garde Theatre and Etherial Aesthetics from Kandinsky to Futurism; Mike Vanden Heuvel
10. The Vibratorium Electrified; Nicholas Ridout
11. Vibration, Percussion, and Primitivism in Avant-Garde Performance; Adrian Curtin
12. Deleted Expletives: Vibration & the Modernist Vocal Imaginary; Simon Bayley