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1 - Representations

Seeing the Singer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2021

Oskar Cox Jensen
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Summary

My first chapter, ‘Representations: Seeing the Singer’, addresses perhaps the greatest problem to the historian of song culture, that of its sources, and in so doing serves also as a comprehensive introduction to the ballad-singer and her place in metropolitan life. It is constructed chiefly as an analysis of images of singers, supported by comparison with other media of representation, from plays to novels. I have tried to tackle head on the fact that in the historical record we see the singer almost entirely from above – and almost never hear them. Several key themes emerge: the extent to which ballad-singers were both silenced (or ventriloquised) and stripped of their crowds, thereby diminishing their potential to disturb viewers; the process of Othering whereby singers became synecdochal for an underclass within London, helping to create a domestic narrative of internal colonialism; and above all, the complex articulation of immorality in imagery. This lay less in a focus upon the female body than in the associations of the open mouth – a vulgar, sexualised trope that located vice, not in the singer’s person, but in their song.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Representations
  • Oskar Cox Jensen, University of East Anglia
  • Book: The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London
  • Online publication: 05 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108908108.002
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  • Representations
  • Oskar Cox Jensen, University of East Anglia
  • Book: The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London
  • Online publication: 05 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108908108.002
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.

  • Representations
  • Oskar Cox Jensen, University of East Anglia
  • Book: The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London
  • Online publication: 05 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108908108.002
Available formats
×