"A deeper and richer music": The Poetics of Sound and Voice in Felicia Hemans's 1820s Poetry

Felicia Hemans's poetry develops an imagery of sounds and voices as a central thematic paradigm based on stratifications of acoustic effects usually uttered by specific figures or associated with specific places. The voices and sounds in Hemans's poetry are regularly situated within cultural and ideological contexts drawn from history or historically grounded literary and non-literary sources or connected with men and women in identifiable settings and situations. Concentrating on Hemans's 1820s poetic output, this essay suggests that, if her use of sounds undeniably conveys transcendental values and spiritual meanings, it also constructs a situated acoustic dimension that contributes to the narration of specific tales, of historically, geographically, and ideologically rooted narratives. In addition, this poetic elaboration of sounds and voices opens up a reflection on the nature and status of poetry as localized utterance and performance. This essay reconstructs and assesses the pervasive presence of sounds and voices in Hemans's output in order to counter familiar charges of dullness or facileness leveled at her poetry and reveal its carefully orchestrated, as well as consistently situated, nature.