The Sound of Prose: Rhythm, Translation, Orality

Abstract

The sound of prose is the central subject of this dissertation whose purpose is to bring together three intersecting categories—rhythm, orality, and translation—through a series of case studies in comparative literature that range from the theoretical to the textual to the oral. One of its primary aims is to reintegrate rhythm into literary studies and to deepen scholarly understanding of categories of thinking that have largely disappeared. To that end, it analyzes work of master prose stylists of the early- to mid-twentieth century whose writing demands special attention to rhythm orality: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Karen Blixen, Oscar Wilde, and Jorge Luis Borges. Drawing on examples in French, Italian, Spanish, and English, it seeks to understand how prose writers achieve their rhythmic effects. While employing the terminology of classical rhetoric, it emphasizes the practices of transcription and close listening as opposed to traditional prosody. In demonstrating the importance of archival recordings, it shifts the focus of analysis from the visual and the silent to the aural and oral. It addresses fundamental questions in literary studies: How does the study of rhythm and orality change the study of literature? How may reading aloud shape our understanding of a literary work—its rhythms and its acoustics—as it moves through intra- and inter-lingual translations?