Kafka and Noise. The Discovery of Cinematic Sound in Literary Modernism by Kata Gellen

A series of disruptive, unnerving sounds haunts the fictional writings of Franz Kafka.

These include the painful squeak in Gregor Samsa’s voice, the indeterminate whistling of Josefine the singer, the relentless noise in “The Burrow,” and telephonic disturbances in The Castle.

In Kafka and Noise, Kata Gellen applies concepts and vocabulary from film theory to Kafka’s works in order to account for these unsettling sounds. Rather than try to decode these noises, Gellen explores the complex role they play in Kafka’s larger project.

Kafka and Noise offers a method for pursuing intermedial research in the humanities—namely, via the productive “misapplication” of theoretical tools, which exposes the contours, conditions, and expressive possibilities of the media in question. This book will be of interest to scholars of modernism, literature, cinema, and sound, as well as to anyone wishing to explore how artistic and technological media shape our experience of the world and the possibilities for representing it.

Kata Gellen is an assistant professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature at Duke University.

Kata Gellen (Author)
Kafka and Noise.
The Discovery of Cinematic Sound in Literary Modernism
272 pages
Northwestern University Press
Literary Criticism
Cloth Text – $99.95
ISBN 978-0-8101-3894-0
Paper Text – $34.95
ISBN 978-0-8101-3893-3
Publication Date: January 2019

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The Discovery of Cinematic Sound in Literary Modernism
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