Dialect, Victorian Poetry, and the Voices of Print

Dubois, Martin

doi:10.1353/elh.2023.a914016

Dialect, Victorian Poetry, and the Voices of Print

Dubois, Martin

Authors

Dr Martin Dubois martin.a.dubois@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

Abstract

This essay addresses the status of voice and print in dialect poetry through a study of its mid-nineteenth-century heyday in British literature. Dialect poems are often imagined to render oral forms into print, so that their writtenness appears secondary and belated. This essay argues differently, proposing that the Victorian poets it considers—William Barnes, Janet Hamilton, and Ralph Ditchfield—instead develop original forms of expression from the interaction of speech and text. Rather than needing to be liberated from print by voice, Victorian dialect poems play on the difficulty of their being spoken, thriving on the difference between types of language and varieties of audience.

Citation

Dubois, M. (2023). Dialect, Victorian Poetry, and the Voices of Print. ELH: English Literary History, 90(4), 1069-1098. https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2023.a914016

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jan 4, 2022
Online Publication Date	Dec 8, 2023
Publication Date	Dec 8, 2023
Deposit Date	Feb 7, 2023
Publicly Available Date	Feb 7, 2023
Journal	ELH: English Literary History
Print ISSN	0013-8304
Electronic ISSN	1080-6547
Publisher	Johns Hopkins University Press
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	90
Issue	4
Pages	1069-1098
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2023.a914016
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1183579