J155: About the "Sound" component of this course

Why we consider "sound"

As the student's basic language skills develop more subtle reading skills should also be nutured. In the case of literature, this means not only understanding the basic meaning of the sentence but the feel and style of the prose. (Poetry is not considered in this class.) While the student still needs to be concerned about vocabulary and grammar, how something is being said is, ultimately, 100% critical in appreciating literary expression. This is a literature class with a heavy language component where we explore issues beyond vocabulary and grammar. While there are many paths forward for doing this, I have a particular interest in non-discursive contexts and how they affect interpretation. One of the contexts I am particularly interested relates to emotion. I am also interested in the musical brain and how music generate emotions and, by extention, the musicality of literature's role in establishing emotion and other interpretive contexts. So, for this class, as one of the ways we explore how something is said, we think of the language in terms of its sound structure. So, in short, we look at the role of sound in generating the context for a narrative, a context that is important in giving the narrative meaning.

There are three basic points I would like students to keep in mind:

"Sound" will contribute an indistinct characteristic. We will never find, for example, "the sound of sadness" but we can definitely discuss how sound seems to support the mood of a story or how we should be interpreting a scene.

"Sound" as a significant factor is usually not widely present in a story. It is in moments or particular scenes, but it can influence a whole story nevertheless: Imagine spending the night at a hotel you are not entirely comfortable with, in a city you are a little anxious about, in a neighborhood that is not your favorite. You lie in bed, trying to fall asleep and you hear a gunshot in the neighborhoo, and maybe a couple of muffled yells. The acutal sound is exceptionally brief but its influence on how you will sleep that night could be extensive. So, like a lot of narrative moments, sound events can reach across texts and have wide influence despite a brief presence.

The authors we read are not selected because all of them are brilliant at using sound. Rather, they are selected first on the interest of the author and the story itself, then with an intention of finding different styles. This difference in not just in how sound is used but in the degee of its use. For some of the stories we read it is essential, for others it is incidental.

What I mean by "sound"

First, I should state that I work from this assumption: sound generates emotion. To think of the sound of a text is to explore the mood, context, non-discursive, or whatever aspects of a piece of literature that adds important value to it.

Components of "sound" as we discuss it in J155

Sound quality (timbre, such as the difference between a cello and a banjo)

• Sound quality when the text is read aloud.
• Sound quality in the 話し振り（はなしぶり）of characters (how they say what they say, including but not only dialect—for example choosing to end a sentence with or without わ changes the overall feel of the words said: 行くよ、行くわ、行くわよ、等)
• Sound quality via structure: tightly controlled sound structure shown through parallels, repetitions, measured pacing and variations of a theme repeated vs. loose and meandering styles (overall or at the level of the sentence).
  • Tightly structured, declarative, definitive: "I will look for you … I will find you ... And I will kill you." (Liam Neesan in "Taken", film 2008: audio)
  • Tightly structured, declarative, definitive.
  • Meandering: "Uh, in that case, I don't know, well, perhaps it is better that we, say, put off — for a while at least — our plans for that — what was it? — picnic?"

Sounds suggested by or stated explicitly by the narrative, as symbols and context. Narrative events.

• These are sounds stated by the narrative as happening:
  • "The rifles repeated, one after another, with a sharp "crack", and, by the fourth 'crack', he was dead."
  • "While he lost himself in the mystery of her gray and emotionless eyes, canaries, somewhere, broke into song."

Musical qualities

• Rhyming, alliteration, sound affinities, and so on
• [clock, joyce]
• Rhythm: repetition, managing clause and sentence length / clause and sentence endings to make sharp or soft endings, counterpoint / back-and-forth via dialogue and such
• Pacing: overall speed, speed changes. Pacing is usually primarily a function of narrative events but dialogue often gets involved and, sometimes, sound structure of sentences does as well.
• bumble, conc d

Random comment

Frederic Nietzsche was very interested rhythm, including the rhythm of literary pieces. It is probably the early interest I had in this philosopher, my general interest in the emotional (non-discursive) components of literary works, and more recent brain science advances that acknowledge the important and unique nature of music that created the concept for this class. I was looking for a way to discuss themes but also the nuances of a text that can only be gained through reading the original Japanese. I settled on emphasizing not just the "voice" of the author, but the sound structures of the text. Nietzsche, by the way, as probably many of you know, was given to assertive statements that were imbedded in his German pride. He says the following of the English (from Beyond Good and Evil); I wonder what he would have said of the Japanese, if he has spent time living there .... "But what offends in even the most humane Englishman is, to speak metaphorically (and not metaphorically---), his lack of music: he has in the movements of his soul and body no rhythm and dance, indeed not even the desire for rhythm and dance, for 'music'."