Hello Katrin Korkalainen

please check the resources

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~jewel001/humanities/book/13literature.htm

http://www.kenbakerbooks.com/lessonplansenses.htm

https://writersedit.com/use-all-five-senses-unlock-fictional-world/

https://writersinthestorm.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/unforgettable-writing-all-5-senses-add-emotion/

http://www.literarydevices.com/imagery/

https://www.pearsonhighered.com/samplechapter/0205703313_ch8.pdf

Kafka are a great author of stories like there. The Metamorphosis is the best one.

https://smile.amazon.com/Metamorphosis-Franz-Kafka/dp/1557427666/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478569834&sr=1-2&keywords=kafka

Lots of good stuff here! Not sure how wide you are looking but of course Proust, and Kafka and Calvino as mentioned. (Tons of poetry, but that seems beyond what you're looking for.) Poe's "Tell Tale Heart," Dinesen's "Babette's Feast," and Roald Dahl's "Taste" all get at the senses.  Stefan Zweig's "Invisible collection" and Saramago's "Blindness" both deal with the absence of vision. 

If you haven't already, for secondary lit, check out Diane Ackerman's "Natural History of the Senses" and Constance Classen's work in general. Other books at: http://www.sensorystudies.org/books-of-note/

-Brent

Hallo Katrin,

A very good read is F. Gonzalez-Crussi's The Five Senses (Picador pb, 1989). The author, a pathologist, also wrote other essays relating to the body. Oliver Sacks commented most appreciatively about their literary merits. 

Hallo Katrin, I'll suggest You to take into consideration The scent of apple by Ivan Bunin, (Nobel prize in 1933) this is one of the first short stories (earlier than Proust) in which smell recall memories of the past. I wrote a paper on this subject, but it's in italian, (the book is entirely dedicated to perfume in literature and now the editors are translating it in english. Maybe, it will be ready at the end of the year. 

Katrin, I have just been watching a BBC documentary: The Art of Looking,  featuring John Berger, the author of Ways of Seeing. He was (is) a prolific writer on visual aspects - truly an eye-opener if ever there was one. 

I would recommend Fiona Cheong´s Shadow Theatre. She uses hearing and smell mainly although the book is not about the senses. It is a postcolonial novel where the senses are used to bring back memories.

Two useful short stories could be: "A Pair of Silk Stockings" by Kate Chopin and "Odour of Chrysanthemums" by D.H. Lawrence.

An obvious choice;

Maraini, Dacia.  1990.  La Lunga Vita di Marianna Ucria.  Milan: Rizzoli. 

English translation:

Maraini, Dacia., Dick Kitto, and Elspeth Spottiswood. The Silent Duchess. 1st U.S. ed. New York, NY: Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1998.

short stories by Katherine Mansfield; also: Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss - less main stream, but equally interesting when it comes to senses, especially sight (perception of light / function of light).

Thank you everyone for your great suggestions!! Some of these I'm quite familiar with, but others not at all. A very intriguing list so far.

My own favorite example for sound is a novel by a blind writer, Stephen Kuusisto's Eavesdropping: A Life by Ear (2006).

Can anyone think of examples for taste (novels on food, eating, etc.)?

Or for touch? The obvious would be to look at novels with sensual or sexual themes, but I would prefer to look at more "everyday" experiences, such as heat, cold, the feeling of surfaces, etc.

Someone mentioned Poe, which made me think that the horror genre in general would probably be a great genre for exploring sensual images.

HE  Bates' Love for Lydia sensuallydescribes the English countryside and the changing seasons. Bates never went to university and he's regarded by the establishment as an outsider, a 'non academic', in their opinion, a very good amateur. I was brought up in the countryside, and for me, his writing contains some of the best visual and sensory descriptions I've ever read, on a par with DH Lawrence. 

Do you read French? About taste, I highly suggest "La Gourmandise", from Muriel Barbery, Éditions Gallimard. The story is about a diying food critic, trying to remember a forgotten flavor of his past. I love that novel! Don't know if it has been translated though. If you are interested, I could suggest other titles in French (from Québec).

Thank you Andrew and Sophie!

Yes, landscape/climate/environment was what I had in mind when thinking about possible themes related to touch.

Sophie, my French is unfortunately not what it once was, but I found the translation for the book. Thank you so much!! This was exactly what I was looking for. And please do suggest other titles: I can check for translations, and then read the original alongside.

I would suggest a precious short novel like The dead by James Joyce. If I don't remember wrong, it deals -at least- with taste and smell (the meals, the drink) and sound (music), probably with more senses .

Yes, I've taught a lot on Joyce as well as on the above-mentioned Mansfield (and also published on Joyce), so I know that they make much use of sensory images. And there are a lot of other great short-story writers out there who do. My own field of specialization is ethnic literature / immigrant literature (mostly in the American context), so I would easily finds tons of examples from there, such as experiences with different food cultures, etc. However, I'm rather looking for examples in which a particular sense (or more) is also the novel's/short story's main theme.... as in some of the examples people suggested above .... rather than that sensory images are used to support other themes in a story. But thank you for your contribution! "The Dead" as well as some other Dubliners stories are definitely on top of my list if I decide to explore "sound" through the theme of "music."   

The received wisdom of 5 discrete senses is constantly being challenged. As a means of investigation this model is helpful but it has limitations. What may be fruitful in your project is just this; to explore how the senses are ordered, accentuated, co-mingle and/or diminished. Also, is there a cultural dimension that is embedded in the literary and expressive? Sounds and vibration feature in my recent work, which has been hugely edifying when studied through the lens of a culture different to my own.

Thank you, Neil, for your very constructive answer. I totally agree with you. I've written much on sensory images and I know that it is virtually impossible to look at one sense without also looking at the others. And yes, the cultural dimension is extremely important. If I am honest, I don't have any specific research questions as regards this topic; for now I'm just gathering materials. But one thing I'm interested in is the literary imagination, and what other dimensions of understanding sensory images might open up, especially in reference to things not told in a story. So, e.g., if I have a sentence like "I heard a river whispering in the background" without much other information, what might the word "whispering" tell you in terms of the distance of the river, its size, the season, etc. Or what might "the ticking of the clock" reveal about a character's emotional state, etc. So, I guess it's the cognitive potential I'm interested in, and that can go anywhere.

I would very much appreciate it if you gave me the titles of the recent work you were referring to; I would love to have a look at it.

Another title could be Ensayo sobre la ceguera by the portuguese autor José Saramago (Nobel prize on Literature 1998), translated into Engish as Blindness, it´s a terryfiing allegory on the lack of visión.

This reminds me very much of the kigo or season words in haiku. They are very much embedded in senses and insinuate sensual awareness into the text, as you say in the example that you give. The paper related to the research that I mention is called: "Sounds and sound thinking in |xam-ka !au: “These are those to which I am listening with all my ears” https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2016.1233615 

The paper is open source. Included in the PDF (if you have FlashPlayer) are the sounds of a desert storm, and also the sounds of a rock gong being played, which are relevant to the text.

https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23311983.2016.1233615

Thanks to everyone for their contributions!! This is so much more than I expected. This will make for a great start!

Have you considered Death in Venice by Thomas Mann?

Thank you, Tina. No, I've never read Death in Venice, but since German is my mother tongue, I could actually read this one in the original.

I should have probably mentioned in my original message, that my field is English Philology, so to begin with, I'm looking for works originally published in the English language (the country doesn't matter so much), but if there are some great and obvious examples in other languages, I'm very happy to consider them too.

Hello, Katrin,

How about "The Blind Man" by D. H. Lawrence?

Hope this helps,

Gloria

Hello Gloria,

Thank you for your excellent suggestion. I was unfamiliar with that story, but I did a quick internet search, and it fits my subject perfectly. I'm quite familiar with Lawrence's poetry, but have never gotten around reading any of his novels or short stories ... but now that you gave me this wonderful example, I'm thinking that there are probably other works by Lawrence that would be useful for my project. Thank you again; I'll definitely have a closer look at Lawrence!

katrin

I would recommend The Waves by Virginia Woolf, to me her most fascinating novel. It is highly sense oriented in a very innovative form.

Or also Berenice and the Tell Tale Heart byPoe

Thank you, Jim and Wolfgang! I'll have a look at these works. What an impressive list now! I'm so happy about all these wonderful suggestions.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my favorite novels and was already on my original list.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym

Works by Gerard de Nerval, and Miserable Miracle and other works by Henri Michaux. Journey to The End of Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine.

Hi Katrin

I am the Doorway by Stephen King (1971)

Cogito by Élisabeth Vonarburg

Hope these help!

Hi,

The Old Man and the Sea by E. Hemingway is a good candidate.

Best

The long poem Soap by FRANCIS PONGE. Also the novel Waves by Virginia Woolf.

"The Blind Man," a short story by D. H. Lawrence

http://www.online-literature.com/dh_lawrence/england-my-england/3/

Thanks for sharing the piece of information.

Emad

St. Mawr-  DH Lawrence short novel

I would recomend Ensayo sobre la ceguera by José Saramago a Portuguese writer. In this novel a desease is spreading leaving people blind. Blindness is a metaphor for the human condition, but I still think that it could be of use if you are interested in the senses

I think you will find this with Mobassan

By the way, Katrin, the title I´ve given you for Ensayo sobre la ceguera is in Spanish, but the novel was written in Portuguese.