ABSTRACT
In this essay, Adela Pinch suggests that to focus on speech and voice in Austen affords us an opportunity to reopen some fundamental questions about her place in the history of the novel, a history to which she is rightly seen as central. Now, she contends, is a good time to use Austen to explore not only gaps, but also new developments in narrative theory. After a few decades of emphasis—in the study of the novel in general and of Austen in particular—on the representation of character’s minds, an exciting conversation about the techniques for representing dialogue in fiction is now taking place. In this context, the essay assesses the significance of the astonishing diversity of Austen’s methods for representing speech and voice. It seeks to understand small moments when Austen makes a voice emerge against the background of larger histories: a media-centred history of the novel as part of a longer history of media designed to capture sound; and the cultural history of Romantic-era Britain, a culture attuned to the glamour of the human voice.
