Scarred phonation and the act of listening in Byron’s Marino Faliero

This chapter examines sounds and the act of listening in Byron’s closet drama, Marino Faliero . It focuses on the sounds of “scarred phonation,” those murmurs, mumbles, acousmatic sounds, half-aborted phrases, and near silences that reverberate throughout the play’s sonic environment. Drawing on the work of Michel Chion and Mladen Dolar on sound and the object voice, this chapter suggests that Marino Faliero calls its readers to be listeners. Scarred phonation, and particularly the play’s use of aposiopesis (the sudden breaking off of speech), becomes performative of the power of withholding, preserving, and encrypting that defines the closet drama itself.