Dr. Joe Conway鈥檚 latest research project flies in the face of his past work by migrating toward bird mimicry in literature.
Michael Mercier | UAH
When Dr. Joe Conway submitted a paper about talking birds to a captivity narrative conference on a lark five years ago, he never expected that his work would wind up in ": The Poetics of Parroting, Mimicry, and Other Starling Tropes," a collection of essays published by Fordham University Press that considers bird mimicry in literature. "This paper didn鈥檛 fit in with my other research," he says. "So when I heard about this collection, it seemed like the place to put it."
After receiving his doctorate in American literature in 2008, Dr. Conway鈥檚 career took flight at 草榴社区 in 2011 when he joined the Department of English as an assistant professor. "My focus is mainly 19th century American literature, which has introduced me to different aspects about Edgar Allan Poe that might not be the most well-known," he says. That interest, in turn, served as the inspiration for his chapter entitled "Words Are for the Birds: 鈥楴on-Reasoning Creatures Capable of Speech鈥� in the Writings of Schreber and Poe."
There鈥檚 recognition of the self in the animal, and then the rejection of that recognition.
"Poe鈥檚 interest in talking birds like ravens and parrots stems from their being what he called 鈥榥on-reasoning creatures capable of speech,鈥� and there鈥檚 something unsettling about their relation to language use as a result," he says. In addition to Poe, Dr. Conway was also intrigued by Daniel Paul Schreber, a 19th century German judge who was a voracious reader of Romantic literature like Poe. Schreber, who was diagnosed with what we would now call schizophrenia, believed that birds sent from God spoke to him while he was interned in a German asylum. "The birds would never leave him alone, but nothing that they said was original," Dr. Conway explains. He finds that the most disconcerting aspect of the torture for Schreber was the unoriginal nature of the birds鈥� statements. Schreber鈥檚 birds are only capable of repeating what they have heard, which Dr. Conway sees as a kind of linguistic colonization. "His abuse by second-hand language offers up a terrifying image of the modern individual, who is bombarded by newspapers, regurgitated opinion, and ideology 鈥� or today鈥檚 social media consumer bombarded by shares and retweets."
One of the similarities between the two writers stems from their thoughts about the way that language impacts the listener. The words that emit from both Poe and Schreber鈥檚 beaked orators have effects beyond the auditory. Schreber, for example, "said the birds would inject the words into his nerves like poison," says Dr. Conway. Similarly, Poe鈥檚 narrator in "The Raven" states that the bird鈥檚 words were like a beak in his heart. "They are both dealing with a lot of the same issues," he says. "They鈥檙e both interested in how language and sound are not simply mental experiences but bodily ones as well."
Dr. Conway鈥檚 essay, 鈥淲ords Are for the Birds: 鈥楴on-Reasoning Creatures Capable of Speech鈥� in the Writings of Schreber and Poe,鈥� appears in 鈥淢ocking Bird Technologies,鈥� edited by Christopher GoGwilt and Melanie D. Holm and published by Fordham University Press.
Both Poe and Schreber also saw birds as being capable of revealing the flaws in our assumptions about the primacy of humans over animals. "The experience of hearing a bird talk is uncanny in that this animal has an ability that is supposed to be special to me as a person," says Dr. Conway. "This makes us think about what else there is apart from language that makes us human." While we may acknowledge that there are animals with the ability to speak, we nevertheless continue to separate man and beast. "There鈥檚 recognition of the self in the animal, and then the rejection of that recognition," Dr. Conway explains. "We have sort of a reflexive desire to draw a hard line between us. But then there鈥檚 that darn raven on the bust of Pallas. And it won鈥檛 stop mocking us."
Dr. Conway finds that the most important element in Schreber and Poe鈥檚 work is their use of sound. "Sound is often the thing that gets thrown away when we talk about literature, because we want to get at the meaning of a poem or story. But what does sound contribute to the experience of being human or not human?" he asks. "It鈥檚 this overlooked aspect of language." When birds in these works speak, their words are just sound devoid of intended meaning. "In his literary criticism, Poe writes that poems needn鈥檛 be about anything really, so long as they are sonorous," he says. Poe鈥檚 raven uses the word "nevermore" because, according to Poe, the long "o" sound accompanied by the "r" sound makes for the most resonant sound combination. "For Poe, a poet is one who works with sound rather than language," says Dr. Conway. "So when you have birds that also produce sounds rather than language, they are eerily similar to the poet."
"Mocking Bird Technologies" may be a serious collection of non-fiction, but that doesn鈥檛 stop Dr. Conway鈥檚 chapter from being a nest of puns. "In this essay I kind of celebrate punning, which is a way of opening up language," he says. He isn鈥檛 putting all his eggs in one literary basket, though. Dr. Conway鈥檚 upcoming book, with a working title of "Doggone Money," examines how the portrayal in literature of the numerous currencies used in pre-Civil-War America was representative of the socio-economic fragmentation in that period. In the meantime, he will continue to take English majors and aspiring Poe scholars under his wing.