Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T01:38:53.584Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - The Sound of My Voice: Aurality and Credible Faith in the Vox Clamantis

from PART I - KNOWING THE SELF AND OTHERS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2019

Get access

Summary

Sound, as Jean-Luc Nancy notes, is an assault. Our senses absorb sound without impediment—unlike the eye, the ear is multidirectional and always open. We can focus on particular sounds at the expense of others, but barring mechanical or artificial apparatuses, we cannot “close our ears” to sound. The act of listening is thus an opening to the presence of sound as it moves through space and time, and, as Nancy writes, “To listen is to enter into that spatiality by which, at the same time, I am penetrated, for it opens up in me as well as around me, and from me as well as toward me.” As a result, he argues, “To be listening is always to be on the edge of meaning.” Yet, of course, to hear is not the same as to listen: in both, the human body interacts with a sonic event, either through production or reception, but the mechanisms by which sound exerts pressure upon the ear are markedly different. In listening, we attend to a sound, be it a speech-act or a soundscape, with intention; listening is a temporal act of subjective engagement. Hearing is not an act; it is compulsory. In hearing, we are passive: provided we are awake and aware of sensation, sound enters into our consciousness without invitation. Listening, on the other hand, is our awareness of the present presence of sound as it unfolds in time, and it works through anticipation and expectation. We anticipate the word that is coming next. We find pleasure in the satisfying conclusion of a melodic turn or in the completion of a couplet. To look, the eye chooses to move from one sight to another, or (alternatively) to close and shut out sight altogether; to hear, the ear is passively waiting for sound to unfold; to listen, sound becomes an element of temporal subjectivity that is open to the other.

As such, to consider how Gower uses sound, and more specifically, how he uses the sound of his voice in the Vox Clamantis, is to question how we attune ourselves to his language and how we attend to the poetics of the text as it unfolds.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×