The Tell-Tale Sound: The Conflict between the Visual and the Acoustic in Poe's Fiction

Foreign Literature Studies ›› 2021, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (4): 75-86.

• Interdisciplinary Literary Studies • Previous Articles Next Articles

The Tell-Tale Sound: The Conflict between the Visual and the Acoustic in Poe's Fiction

Yu Lei

Published:2021-08-29
About author:Yu Lei is Professor of English at the Research Institute of Foreign Literature, Beijing Foreign Studies University (Beijing 100089, China), specializing in the 19^th-century English and American literature and the history of media technology. Email: yulei@bfsu.edu.cn
Supported by:
A “Double First-Class Initiative” project, “The Frontier Studies Library of Core Topics in Foreign Languages and Literatures,” sponsored by Beijing Foreign Studies University (2020SYLZDXM044)

Abstract

Abstract: Poe's fiction tends to highlight the disintegrative or reformative influence of the acoustic upon the visual, prophesying what Marshall McLuhan would elaborate on the acoustic and the visual spaces regarding the cognitive structure of the brain. Based on this theoretical isomorphism, this article intends to explore the coupling effect between femininity and the acoustic space in Poe's fiction, and to analyze, in particular, how female characters (and even symbolized beasts under certain circumstances) challenge the empowered space of visual cognition, furtively turning the linear logic of the traditional visual cognition into the non-linear logic that has as its core the decentralized and dehierarchized acoustic mode, so as to illustrate how the sound functins as a unique channel, through which Poe brings to light, at certain crucial points in his fiction, the socio-political connotations of the text.

Key words: Poe, McLuhan, sound, the conflict between the visual and the acoustic

Yu Lei. The Tell-Tale Sound: The Conflict between the Visual and the Acoustic in Poe's Fiction[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2021, 43(4): 75-86.

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The Tell-Tale Sound: The Conflict between the Visual and the Acoustic in Poe's Fiction

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