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Listening to Christabel : Sound, Silence and the Contingencies of Voice

Listening to Christabel : Sound, Silence and the Contingencies of Voice Jonathon Shears Keywords: Coleridge, Christabel, voice, listening, post-structuralism, ventriloquism I What did Coleridge's voice signify? As Seamus Perry tells us it was difficult to describe, although common themes emerge in the recollections of different people who heard Coleridge speak.1 It had `melody', it had `flow', it was often likened metaphorically to a river or to the peal of an organ.2 To Barry Cornwall `his utterance was altogether a chant' (Armour and Howes, 318). De Quincey found that Coleridge's conversation entailed `a silent contract between him and his hearers that nobody should speak but himself' (Armour and Howes, 199). Henry Nelson Coleridge felt the need to preserve Coleridge's conversation in the volume that became Table Talk, published a year after Coleridge's death in 1835, although `[a] sort of tacit admission of failure accompanies every page [. . . ] and expressions of regret at the impossibility of transcription' (Perry, 106). It was impossible to transcribe the experience of hearing Coleridge's voice: the efforts of those who tried are collected together in the invaluable volume Coleridge the Talker edited by Richard Armour and Raymond Howes. Perry argues that `Coleridge the talker' became a myth of obscure erudition ­ bound up http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Romanticism Edinburgh University Press

Listening to Christabel : Sound, Silence and the Contingencies of Voice

Romanticism , Volume 19 (1): 44 – Apr 1, 2013

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References (7)

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press 2013
Subject
Literary Studies
ISSN
1354-991X
eISSN
1750-0192
DOI
10.3366/rom.2013.0112
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Jonathon Shears Keywords: Coleridge, Christabel, voice, listening, post-structuralism, ventriloquism I What did Coleridge's voice signify? As Seamus Perry tells us it was difficult to describe, although common themes emerge in the recollections of different people who heard Coleridge speak.1 It had `melody', it had `flow', it was often likened metaphorically to a river or to the peal of an organ.2 To Barry Cornwall `his utterance was altogether a chant' (Armour and Howes, 318). De Quincey found that Coleridge's conversation entailed `a silent contract between him and his hearers that nobody should speak but himself' (Armour and Howes, 199). Henry Nelson Coleridge felt the need to preserve Coleridge's conversation in the volume that became Table Talk, published a year after Coleridge's death in 1835, although `[a] sort of tacit admission of failure accompanies every page [. . . ] and expressions of regret at the impossibility of transcription' (Perry, 106). It was impossible to transcribe the experience of hearing Coleridge's voice: the efforts of those who tried are collected together in the invaluable volume Coleridge the Talker edited by Richard Armour and Raymond Howes. Perry argues that `Coleridge the talker' became a myth of obscure erudition ­ bound up

Journal

RomanticismEdinburgh University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2013

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