Sound Writing: Experimental Modernism and the Poetics of Articulation

Avant-garde writers and artists of the twentieth century rethought poetic language by focusing on the physical process of spoken language, employing scientific theories and techniques to create "sound writing" that aimed to capture the acoustic phenomenon of vocal articulation. This search for new possibilities played a central role in the transformation of poetry into a site of radical linguistic experimentation.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 22 April 2022
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Avant-garde writers and artists of the twentieth century revolutionized poetic language by embracing scientific theories and techniques, focusing on the physical process of spoken language. This modernist approach, known as "sound writing," aimed to capture the acoustic phenomenon of vocal articulation through graphic means. Tobias Wilke delves into the origins of sound writing in nineteenth-century disciplines like physiology and experimental phonetics, tracing its influence on the aesthetic practices of the interwar avant-garde and its reemergence in the postwar period. These projects explored the potential for crossing over from the audible to the visible, from speech to notation, and from the body to trace. By employing various techniques and concepts, these avant-garde artists sought to transform poetry into a site of radical linguistic experimentation. Through a comprehensive examination of the works of writers and artists such as Raoul Hausmann, Kurt Schwitters, Viktor Shklovsky, Hugo Ball, Charles Olson, and Marshall McLuhan, Wilke provides a fresh perspective on the history of the twentieth-century avant-garde.

Dimension: 229 x 152 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226817750