Echoes in the Mountains : The Romantic Lake District's Soundscape

Taylor, Joanna Elizabeth (2017) Echoes in the Mountains : The Romantic Lake District's Soundscape. Studies in Romanticism, 57 (3). pp. 383-406. ISSN 0039-3762

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Abstract

This article explores the importance of the Lake District’s soundscape for Romantic conceptions of sound, noise and silence. It reads poetry, guide-books and travel narratives from the region in light of the understandings of acoustics that were developing in this period. Specifically, it is interested in the way that the Lake District’s topography affected sound and suggests that writers in the Romantic period in particular used sound as an effective place-making practice. As a result, this article posits that the Lake District was central to the development of a new form of sublime experience: the acoustic sublime. It demonstrates the centrality of sound to Romantic aesthetic and imaginative practices and argues for acoustic experiences to be more widely recognised as fundamental to our understandings of Romantic literature and culture.