Telepoetics: Writing the Phone in Literature, Culture and Theory

Tapping into a wide range of the protocols, practices and forms of the telephone and its extended apparatus – from analogue to digital; from corded candlestick to flat, reflective interface; and from buzzing switchboard to encrypting scrambler phone – this volume examines how the literary telephone connects, and disrupts, our relationship with such prevalent and compelling preoccupations as desire, resistance, responsibility, surveillance, political coercion and warfare. Across seventeen chapters, it brings together readings informed by literary criticism and theory, poetics, sound studies, material culture, media archaeology and cultural history. Considering areas including the modernist lyric, mid-twentieth-century fiction, contemporary drama and video games, it establishes new approaches for understanding the extensive, and mutable, relationship between literature and the telephone.

• Publication date: 31 May 2026
• Page count: 376
• Dimensions: Height 243 mm; Width 162 mm; Thickness 27 mm
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781399543170