Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern EnglandUniversity of Pennsylvania Press, 2007 M05 2 - 277 pages Voice in Motion explores the human voice as a literary, historical, and performative motif in early modern English drama and culture, where the voice was frequently represented as struggling, even failing, to work. In a compelling and original argument, Gina Bloom demonstrates that early modern ideas about the efficacy of spoken communication spring from an understanding of the voice's materiality. Voices can be cracked by the bodies that produce them, scattered by winds when transmitted as breath through their acoustic environment, stopped by clogged ears meant to receive them, and displaced by echoic resonances. The early modern theater underscored the voice's volatility through the use of pubescent boy actors, whose vocal organs were especially vulnerable to malfunction. |
Other editions - View all
Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England Gina Bloom Limited preview - 2013 |
Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England Gina Bloom Limited preview - 2007 |