Rauschende Kleider. Zur Akustik der Mode bei Theodor Storm

Abstract

Realistic literature of the 19^th century, with its phenomenological sensitivity, often focuses on the sounds of moving clothes, particularly with female characters. Despite the frequent use of this motif, textile sounds have received little attention from a literary studies perspective. However, an acoustic reading focused on movement and the interaction of body and dress opens up new avenues for understanding literary representations of fashion by taking the materiality of the described clothing seriously. Drawing on selected novellas by Theodor Storm, this article demonstrates how the sounds of clothing elude symbolic decoding and thus open up the material’s own poetic potential, which in turn is staged and narratively functionalised in literature using linguistic means.