Phonopoetics: The Making of Early Literary Recordings

249 Pages·2019·15.025 MB·English

by  Jason Camlot

PHONOPOETICS
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P H O N O •
P O E T I C S
The Making of Early Literary Recordings
J A S O N C A M L O T
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Stanford, California
stanford university press
Stanford, California
© 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of
Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Camlot, Jason, 1967– author.
Title: Phonopoetics : the making of early literary recordings / Jason Camlot.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2019. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018042110 (print) | LCCN 2018058290 (ebook) | ISBN
9781503609716 | ISBN 9781503605213 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: English literature—Audio adaptations—History and criticism.
| Literature and technology—History. | Sound recordings—History. | Oral
interpretation—History. | Phonograph—History.
Classification: LCC PR149.A93 (ebook) | LCC PR149.A93 C36 2019 (print) | DDC
820.9/008—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042110
Cover Design: Kevin Barrett Kane
Cover Image: Phonograph horn from the Musée des Ondes Emile Berliner collection.
Photograph by Heather Pepper.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
List of Figures and Table xi
List of Recordings xiii
Introduction: Audiotextual Criticism 1
1 The Voice of the Phonograph 27
2 Charles Dickens in Three Minutes or Less:
Early Phonographic Fiction 71
3 Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Spectral Energy:
Historical Intonation in Dramatic Recitation 100
4 T. S. Eliot’s Recorded Experiments
in Modernist Verse Speaking 137
Conclusion: Analog, Digital, Conceptual 169
Notes 185
Index 219
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK HAS been produced with the support of a great number of
organizations and institutions and many great colleagues and friends.
Research on sound and recorded literary performance is perhaps best de-
livered in a live conference or symposium setting where recordings can
be played, visualized, mimicked by the speaker, and discussed in situ. I
have benefitted enormously over the past two decades from opportuni-
ties to present my research on early spoken recordings and methods of
digital engagement with such recordings at numerous scholarly confer-
ences. I gratefully acknowledge the following associations and conferences
that have provided platforms for sharing, testing, and recalibrating my
approach to phonopoetics: the North American Victorian Studies Asso-
ciation (NAVSA) (2017, 2013, 2011, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2004), Modern Lan-
guage Association (2017), Society for the History of Authorship, Research
and Publishing (SHARP) (2016, 2004, 2000), Humanities Online Research
and Education Symposium, Purdue University (2016), Canadian Society
of Digital Humanities (2015), Victorian Studies Association of Western
Canada (2012), American Culture Association (ACA) (2012, 2007), Popular
Culture Association (PCA) (2011, 2006), Click on Knowledge Conference,
University of Copenhagen (2011); Forms of Science in 19c Britain Confer-
ence, McGill University (2008), Modernist Studies Association (2004),
International Gothic Association / Association of Canadian College and
University Teachers of English (2004), Victorian Soundings conference,
University of California, Santa Cruz (2003), American Studies Association
(2001), and the Northeastern Victorian Studies Association (1999).
I have also benefitted significantly from invitations to present my work
in plenary and workshopping situations. For these opportunities I am most
grateful to Tina Choi and her many great colleagues of the Victorian Studies
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Association of Ontario for an invitation to serve as a plenary at the VSAO
annual conference in Toronto, April 29, 2017; Justin Tackett and colleagues
involved in the Stanford Humanities Center’s Material Imagination Series at
which I presented a seminar, March 10, 2017; Christopher Keep and Organiz-
ers of the 2014 NAVSA conference in Western Ontario at which I delivered
a seminar; Karis Shearer for the invitation to present a keynote address on
phonopoetical methods at the Poetry Off the Page, Editing Modernism in
Canada (EMiCs) conference, University of British Columbia, Okanagan,
August 2, 2013; Matthew Rubery and his colleagues and graduate students
at Queen Mary University, London, for hosting me as a visiting scholar in
residence and engaging with several workshops and lectures I delivered there
in May 2013; Regenia Gagnier, Paul Young, and colleagues at the University
of Exeter for hosting a talk on digital approaches to early spoken recordings
in May 2013; James Emmott and colleagues associated with the London
Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar for hosting a presentation at the In-
stitute of English Studies, London, May 25, 2013; Al Filreis and Steve Evans
for inviting me to share the stage with them for a panel on literary sound
archives as part of the Beyond the Text: Literary Archives in the 21st Century
gathering at the Beinecke Library and Whitman Humanities Center, Yale
University, April 26, 2013; Jessica Riddell and Linda Morra for inviting me
to present my research in a plenary talk before a great crowd of emerging
undergraduate scholars at the Quebec Universities English Undergraduate
Conference (QUEUC) conference, Bishop’s University, Lennoxville, QC,
March 26, 2010; Audrey Jaffe, and my many wonderful colleagues at the
University of Toronto for inviting me to present work in progress at their
regular WINCS seminar, March 24, 2010; Alessandro Porco for hosting me
as a plenary speaker at the Pop Goes the Poem graduate student confer-
ence, SUNY, Buffalo, March 23, 2007; and John Picker and Leah Price for
hosting me as an invited lecturer at the Harvard University Humanities
Center, April 27, 2006.
It is clear from the lists above that for the past decade, NAVSA events
have served as a near annual venue for the development of this research
on early spoken recordings. This association and its members represent
the best interdisciplinary community of scholars I could have hoped for to
test out my ideas since this project began. I wish to acknowledge my many
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
NAVSA-associated colleagues and friends, and my wider circle of research
collaborators, for the inspiring research they have shared, and in many cases
for the great feedback, conversations, and support they have provided to
this project over the years. In particular I thank: Emily Allen, Laurel Brake,
James Buzard, Mary Wilson Carpenter, Tanya Clement, Alison Chapman,
Bassam Chiblack, Tina Choi, Jay Clayton, Eleanor Courtemanche, Den-
nis Dennisoff, Michael Eberle-Sinatra, Andrew Elfenbein, Jennifer Esmail,
Patrick Feaster, Dino Felluga, Renee Fox, Regenia Gagnier, Barbara Gelpi,
Lisa Gitelman, Daniel Hack, Steven High, Jayne Hildebrand, Natalie Hous-
ton, Priti Joshi, Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Ivan Kreilkamp, Christopher
Keep, Barbara Leckie, Mary-Elizabeth Leighton, Margaret Linley, Diana
Maltz, Jill Matus, Richard Menke, Helena Michie, Monique Morgan, Linda
Morra, Annie Murray, Chris Mustazza, Daniel Novak, Marjorie Perloff,
John Picker, Charles Reiss, Catherine Robson, Matthew Rubery, Jonathan
Rose, Jonathan Sterne, Simon Reader, David Seubert, Lisa Surridge, Joanna
Swafford, Jennifer Terni, Marlene Tromp, Chip Tucker, Jeremy Valentine,
Sharon Aranofsky Weltman, and Jared Wiercinski.
Research in the form of archival visits and conference travel that led to
this book could not have been accomplished without the generous support
I have received from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council
of Canada, Le Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture, and from
both the vice-president of Research and Graduate Studies, and the Faculty
of Arts and Science, at Concordia University. My colleagues and students,
past and present, in the Department of English at Concordia University have
provided an ongoing environment of collegiality and intelligence that has
made my research and teaching stronger and more enjoyable. I am grateful
for the intellectual and moral support I have received for this research proj-
ect from Sally Brooke Cameron, Jill Didur, Mary Esteve, Meredith Evans,
Deanna Fong, Marcie Frank, Andre Furlani, Judith Herz, Patrick Leroux,
Katherine McLeod, John Miller, Omri Moses, Nicola Nixon, Kevin Pask,
Jonathan Sachs, Manish Sharma, and Darren Wershler, among many others.
Other colleagues at Concordia have provided support and inspiration even
at the seemingly least-inspiring times (as when serving on administrative
committees). For their support of my research “by other means” I would like
to acknowledge Richard Bernier, Bonnie-Jean Campbell, John Capobianco,