Paper short abstract:

In my PhD thesis, I analyse the representations of nature sounds in popular science books on local nature, especially on birds, of the late 19th century. I seek to understand how describing nature’s and animal’s soundscapes might have been an expression of a changing nature-culture relationship.

Paper long abstract:

The representation and dramatisation of nature’s sounds and silence in non- or partly fictional texts of the past is a broad and interesting – though neglected – field for literary analyses. Since sound recording and broadcasting technologies were not developed sufficiently enough to be used for scientific and/ or educational purposes until the beginning of the 20th century, literature was the main medium to provide educational content about nature and representations of natural sounds. Early science books, especially from the field of popular ornithology and zoology, played an outstanding role not only in being an instrument of communication of scientific knowledge to a broader public, but also in shaping people’s attitudes toward local species and natural spaces and, by doing so, in influencing the collective memory. In my research I wish to explore 1. what sounds were described as natural sounds by the authors and how they were described, 2. what role those sound descriptions played in the texts, and 3. what relationships between humans and more-than-human-environments were articulated and how these corresponded with the formulated acoustic qualities of a place or of nature's denizens. In answering these questions, I want to show that in the context of the rapidly changing environments and the vanishing wilderness of the late 19th century, authors of popular science books aimed to sensitise readers to nature’s acoustic dimensions and to promote proto-ecological thinking by constructing environments and animals as geographically and emotionally close spaces resp. individuals.