Sounds of the Uncanny: Lawrence’s New Version of the Gothic in a Selection of Short Stories
This article aims at reassessing a selection of Lawrence’s uncanny short stories, in particular “The Last Laugh” (1925), “Glad Ghosts” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner” (1926), in the light of more recent theories of acoustics in literature which are interested in the actual experience of listening and...
שמור ב:
| הוצא לאור ב: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/lawrence, |
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| מחבר ראשי: | |
| פורמט: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| שפה: | Anglais |
| יצא לאור: |
Études Lawrenciennes
2025
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| גישה מקוונת: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| סיכום: | This article aims at reassessing a selection of Lawrence’s uncanny short stories, in particular “The Last Laugh” (1925), “Glad Ghosts” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner” (1926), in the light of more recent theories of acoustics in literature which are interested in the actual experience of listening and perception as an aesthetic end in itself. In Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), Lawrence draws attention to Edgar Allan Poe’s sensitivity to laughs, shrieks, whispers, and other sounds and noises, so many aural features that find resonances in his own short fiction. Building on Lawrence’s evocation of Poe’s gothic soundscapes, the article explores to what extent modernist features enhance the uncanny in his own narratives. This new narrative inscription of the listening subject also relies on emerging sound technologies (the gramophone, for instance) which renew gothic aural features. Thus, both sounds of modernity and the modernist interest in auditory perception play into this new version of the Gothic short story. |
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