Abstracts
Abstracts
Hearing Green: Logomarginality in Hamlet.
Bruce R. Smith, Georgetown University.
Numme Feete: Meter in Early Modern England.
Joseph Tate, University of Washington.
Chantal Schütz, Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique, Paris (France)
Other Accents: Some Problems with identifying Elizabethan Pronunciation.
Andrew Gurr, University of Reading.
Paradise Lost and the Acoustics of Hell.
Matthew Steggle, Sheffield Hallam University.
Looking with ears, hearing with eyes: Shakespeare and the ear of the early modern.
Mark Robson, University of Nottingham.
Hearing Green: Logomarginality in Hamlet.
Bruce R. Smith, Georgetown University.
Of all Shakespeare's protagonists, Hamlet would seem to have claims to being the most _there_: he commands nearly a third of the play's lines and holds center stage in a series of rhetorically compelling soliloquies. Considering Hamlet in the context of sound, however, challenges this illusion. This essay examines Hamlet's speeches within three distinct "frames"--physical, physiological, and phenomenolocial--and demonstrates how in each case Hamlet belongs to a sound world that is much larger than the character himself. In all three cases, Hamlet is a marginal figure. As such, he calls into question Derrida's notion of logocentricism as the driving force in literary representations.
Numme Feete: Meter in Early Modern England.
Joseph Tate, University of Washington.
This paper investigates early modern English rhetorical manuals, private letters, book prefaces and academic treatises that affirm the importance of meter as both an aurally and physically affecting phenomenological experience and a crucial participant in the ideologically-bound codes signaling the economic, moral, and racial status of both subjects and objects. Consequently, the paper explores meter in theory, now and then, with special attention given to re-examining conventional writings that depict the effects of rhythm on the body and the relation of poetic form to the politics of cultural identity. The ultimate goal is to articulate, provisionally, a new theoretical and historical contextualization of early modern prosody.
Chantal Schütz, Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique, Paris (France)
The New Globe, a full scale authentic "instrument", opened in summer 1997. Globe productions have a commitment to authenticity that extends to every aspect of the theatre, including the presence of musicians playing on period instruments. The musicians' experience has confirmed that the Globe replica shares some of the aesthetic and practical advantages of authentic instruments, that its acoustic qualities help achieve stylistic coherence. It has also opened up a number of very practical questions: what did musicians do when they were not playing? were they really curtained off? how much did actors' and musicians' work overlap? where did they play from? Through an exploration of the practice of the five first seasons at the reconstructed Globe, this paper attempts to answer some of these questions.
Other Accents: Some Problems with identifying Elizabethan Pronunciation.
Andrew Gurr, University of Reading.
This paper surveys the scholarly work that has been done on recovering
Elizabethan pronunciation, with particular reference to Shakespeare. It contextualizes
that work in terms of the accents of the scholars responsible, and discusses
the importance, as well as the theoretical pitfalls, of the subject. Finally,
it offers phonetic transcriptions of speeches from Hamlet and Julius
Caesar.
Paradise Lost and the Acoustics of Hell
Matthew Steggle, Sheffield Hallam University.
What does Hell sound like? Almost all the accounts of hell in circulation in the Renaissance remark on the incessant, heterogenous, and overwhelming noisiness of Hell's environment and inhabitants. Milton, by contrast, imagines a hell that in itself seems entirely silent and is indeed frightened by the sporadic attempts of the devils to generate noise. This article explores the paradox, noting that the riotous noisiness normally associated with Hell is displaced by Milton into the realm of Chaos, and that both Eden and Heaven are repeatedly figured in terms of the sounds perpetually audible there. Theorizing this distinction in terms of current critical thinking on sound, speech, and silence, the article concludes by considering Paradise Lost itself as an acoustic artefact, a "sound act".
Looking with ears, hearing with eyes: Shakespeare and the ear of the early modern
Mark Robson, University of Nottingham.
Attention to aurality and orality offers the possibility of rethinking the relationship of text to world, but it is also important to take account of the interventions into these arguments of early modern texts themselves. Tracing a line which runs through Shakespeare's Hamlet, Venus and Adonis, and the Sonnets, it is possible to detect a profound unease about the relationship between the senses, and about the effect of the world upon the body. Perception is not neutral. Hearing is revealed as and through a form of reading which demands eyes as well as ears.
©
2001-, Lisa Hopkins (Editor, EMLS).