Sound and Ritualistic Language in Charles Williams’ War in Heaven

Abstract

This study uncovers a link between sound patterns and ritualistic language in Charles Williams’ novels through an analysis of the relationship between type of sound and content. The study focuses on War in Heaven with a view to conducting a preliminary exploration into this link, and establishing possibilities for future research. Like Williams’ other novels, War in Heaven is saturated with the symbolism and ritual practices he learned in The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross and, potentially, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Williams’ experimentation with sound to convey his experience of ritual is explored through the framework of Roman Jakobson’s “Poetic Function”, to establish how Williams may have intended sound to contribute to the experience of the reader. Using a data driven approach, the study explores how sound patterns work with ritualistic content across War in Heaven, discovering a link between fricative sounds and ritualistic events.