Treatments of synesthesia in the arts and humanities generally assume a clear distinction between the neurological condition and the literary device. Synesthetes’ descriptions of colors seen in connection with music, for example, are thought to differ fundamentally from common expressions that rely on transpositions across sensory dimensions (“bright vowels”). This has not always been the case. The distinction emerged over the course of the twentieth century, as scientists sought to constitute “synesthesia” as a legitimate object of modern science. On the Colors of Vowels investigates the ambiguity of visual descriptions of vowels across a wide range of disciplines, casting several landmark texts in a wholly new light. The book traces the migration of sound-color correspondence from its ancient host (music) to its modern one (vowels), investigating the vocalic Klangfarben of Hermann von Helmholtz’s monumental Sensations of Tone, the vowel colors reported in early psychology surveys into audition colorée (colored hearing), the mis-matched timbres that form poetry’s condition of possibility in Stéphane Mallarmé’s “Crisis of Verse,” and the vowel-color analogy central to both the universal alphabets of the nineteenth century and the phonological universals of the twentieth. The book’s final chapter turns to an intricately detailed account of vowel-color correspondence by Ferdinand de Saussure, suggesting how the linguist’s sensitivity to vowel coloration may have guided his groundbreaking study of Indo-European vocalism. Bringing out the diverse ways in which visual conceptions of vowels have inflected the arts and sciences of modernity, On the Colors of Vowels makes it possible to see how discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries crafted the enigma we now readily recognize as “synesthesia.”

The Color Vowel Approach is a 36-page, full-color book featuring a detailed orientation to the Color Vowel Chart tool and approach. The booklet contains teaching techniques, discovery activities, lesson plans, and photocopiable resources.

The seven vowels which we use every day in speech depend on the phenomenon of harmonics which is at the very basis of music. When we hear vowels we are hearing the laws of harmony which are ultimately the laws of number that are said to govern the universe. This is the first book on the subject to appear in English and brings together the fields of linguistics harmony, mythology, history of religions, and occult philosophy. Scholarly, yet practical, this book gives instructions for discovering one's own healing, centering, and uplifting tones.

First published to enormous acclaim in 1973, this book became a classic that revolutionized the way children are taught to read and write poetry. The celebrated poet Kenneth Koch conveys the imaginative splendor of great poetry--by Blake, Donne, Stevens, Lorca, and others--and then shows how it maybe taught so as to help children write poetry of their own. For this edition, the author has written a new introduction and a special afterword for teachers.

Academic Press Series in Cognition and Perception: The Unity of the Senses: Interrelations Among the Modalities focuses on the perceptual processes, approaches, and methodologies involved in studies on the unity of the senses. The publication first elaborates on the doctrines of equivalent information, analogous sensory attributes and qualities, and common psychophysical properties. Discussions focus on discrimination, sensitivity, sound symbolism, intensity, brightness, and cross-modal perception of size, form, and space. The text then examines the doctrine of neural correspondences and sound symbolism in poetry, including sound and meaning, analogue and formal representation, vowel symbolism in poetry, coding perceptual information, coding sensory attributes, and evolution and development. The manuscript takes a look at synesthetic metaphor in poetry, as well as unity of the senses and synesthetic metaphor, warm and cool colors, synesthetic metaphors of odor and music, metaphorical imperative, and the music of Conrad Aiken. The publication is a valuable source of data for researchers interested in the unity of the senses.

This book is a collection of studies providing a unique view on two central aspects of poetry: sounds and emotive qualities, with emphasis on their interactions. The book addresses various theoretical and methodological issues related to topics like sound symbolism, poetic prosody, and voice quality in recited poetry. The authors examine how these sound-related phenomena contribute to the generation of emotive qualities and how these qualities are perceived by readers and listeners. The book builds upon Reuven Tsur’s theoretical research and supplements it from an experimental angle. It also engages in methodological debates with prevalent scientific approaches. In particular, it emphasises the importance of proper theory in empirical literary studies and the role of the personal traits of the reader in literary analysis. The intended readership of this book consists mainly of literary scholars, but it might also appeal to researchers from disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, and brain science.

B is an awfully boastful bloke and when he and the rest of the alphabet get together, he can't help but tease the vowels about their small numbers. So the vowels begin to take off, one by one. The consonants--and the rest of the farm--see just how important vowels really are. With disaster looming and B seeing the error of his ways, can U save the day and set the alphabet right again?