Book contents
- Acoustics in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Science
- Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century Literature and culture
- Acoustics in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Science: Listening at the Threshold
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Whispers in the Roar
- Part I
- Chapter 1 Accessing the Sounds of the Body
- Chapter 2 Stethoscopic Fantasies
- Chapter 3 Middlemarch and the Art of Stethoscopic Listening
- Part II
- Part III
- Part IV
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century Literature and culture
Chapter 3 - Middlemarch and the Art of Stethoscopic Listening
from Part I
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 December 2024
- Acoustics in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Science
- Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century Literature and culture
- Acoustics in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Science: Listening at the Threshold
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Whispers in the Roar
- Part I
- Chapter 1 Accessing the Sounds of the Body
- Chapter 2 Stethoscopic Fantasies
- Chapter 3 Middlemarch and the Art of Stethoscopic Listening
- Part II
- Part III
- Part IV
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century Literature and culture
Summary
Chapter 3 offers a sustained reading of the nature of auditory perception in George Eliot’s Middlemarchin order to demonstrate the significance of listening and attentiveness not only to the pathological sounds of the body but to those metaphoric heart beats and vibrations that signify psychological struggles within the novel as a whole. In Eliot’s realist project, I argue, both medical and imaginative explorations of the vibrations and pulses beyond the thresholds of usual human ‘stupidity’ and sensory perception are stimulants to the imagination, but they are not a cause for horror or dread like those gothic treatments of the stethoscope discussed in the previous chapter. Rather, they offer an opportunity for cultivating medical knowledge, sympathy, and humility. Here, attentive, stethoscopic listening ultimately provides a means of discrimination, of knowing and orienting oneself, and of relating to others in the modern world.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Acoustics in Nineteenth-Century Literature and ScienceListening at the Threshold, pp. 57 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024