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題名 Drinking and Listening in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 作者 吳易道
Wu, Yih-Dau貢獻者 英文系 關鍵詞 drinking; listening; The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Anne Brontё 日期 2021-10 上傳時間 17-Feb-2023 15:07:44 (UTC+8) 摘要 This paper examines the tension between the material object and the immaterial sound in Anne Brontё’s second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). This novel was conceived in a time when drinking was a serious problem both for Brontё herself and for her contemporaries. Just as Anne Brontё witnessed the decline of her intemperate brother Branwell, early-Victorian anti-drink campaigners painstakingly exposed the danger of alcohol abuse. One material object, the bottle, appears very helpful for understanding the role Brontё’s novel plays in this anti-drink culture. One measure of the connection of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and its historical context lies in the ways this novel departs from Charles Mackay’s popular poem The Bottle (1847). Centrally concerned with the physical and moral breakdown of Adam Roy through his heavy drinking, this poem not only dramatizes how a quotidian thing shapes the life of a drunkard but also suggests how sonic perception helps to register the gravity of the drink problem. In this respect, Mackay’s literary imagination formulates a specific relationship between drinking and listening, one that subordinates the latter to the grip of the former. For both characters in the poem and its readers, to listen is to experience the horror of alcohol addiction. On the face of it, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is simply a prose version of The Bottle. Both the novel and the poem register how destructive drinking can be to personal and familial welfare. But an alternative picture emerges if we scrutinise the soundscapes that surround allusions and references to the bottle in this novel. The representations of sonic stimuli in Brontё’s novel parallel the problem of alcoholic stimuli, thus enabling the former to resist and/or rewrite the havoc wrought by the latter. To listen, for Brontё, is to reorient one’s position in relation to material enjoyment, of which the bottle is representative. Brontё scholars have long regarded The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as part and parcel of early-Victorian anti-drink discourses. This essay explores the possibility that the apparent preoccupation of this novel with the bottle belies a deeper interest in the immaterial sound. 關聯 第二十九屆英美文學國際學術研討會, 國立臺灣師範大學、中華民國英美文學學會主辦 資料類型 conference dc.contributor 英文系 dc.creator (作者) 吳易道 dc.creator (作者) Wu, Yih-Dau dc.date (日期) 2021-10 dc.date.accessioned 17-Feb-2023 15:07:44 (UTC+8) - dc.date.available 17-Feb-2023 15:07:44 (UTC+8) - dc.date.issued (上傳時間) 17-Feb-2023 15:07:44 (UTC+8) - dc.identifier.uri (URI) http://nccur.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/143470 - dc.description.abstract (摘要) This paper examines the tension between the material object and the immaterial sound in Anne Brontё’s second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). This novel was conceived in a time when drinking was a serious problem both for Brontё herself and for her contemporaries. Just as Anne Brontё witnessed the decline of her intemperate brother Branwell, early-Victorian anti-drink campaigners painstakingly exposed the danger of alcohol abuse. One material object, the bottle, appears very helpful for understanding the role Brontё’s novel plays in this anti-drink culture. One measure of the connection of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and its historical context lies in the ways this novel departs from Charles Mackay’s popular poem The Bottle (1847). Centrally concerned with the physical and moral breakdown of Adam Roy through his heavy drinking, this poem not only dramatizes how a quotidian thing shapes the life of a drunkard but also suggests how sonic perception helps to register the gravity of the drink problem. In this respect, Mackay’s literary imagination formulates a specific relationship between drinking and listening, one that subordinates the latter to the grip of the former. For both characters in the poem and its readers, to listen is to experience the horror of alcohol addiction. On the face of it, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is simply a prose version of The Bottle. Both the novel and the poem register how destructive drinking can be to personal and familial welfare. But an alternative picture emerges if we scrutinise the soundscapes that surround allusions and references to the bottle in this novel. The representations of sonic stimuli in Brontё’s novel parallel the problem of alcoholic stimuli, thus enabling the former to resist and/or rewrite the havoc wrought by the latter. To listen, for Brontё, is to reorient one’s position in relation to material enjoyment, of which the bottle is representative. Brontё scholars have long regarded The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as part and parcel of early-Victorian anti-drink discourses. This essay explores the possibility that the apparent preoccupation of this novel with the bottle belies a deeper interest in the immaterial sound. dc.format.extent 91 bytes - dc.format.mimetype text/html - dc.relation (關聯) 第二十九屆英美文學國際學術研討會, 國立臺灣師範大學、中華民國英美文學學會主辦 dc.subject (關鍵詞) drinking; listening; The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Anne Brontё dc.title (題名) Drinking and Listening in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall dc.type (資料類型) conference
