ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with contemplating the affective significance of an exhalation of air and end by considering another, the aspirated /h/ of laughter. The concept of the gossips’ circle as a primordial discursive scene has remarkable longevity. According to the narrative logic, the women’s voices testify to the authentic shrewish interior their enticingly beautiful exteriors belie. Even given the significant changes to women’s social circumstances in the late twentieth century, the features of the gossips’ circle remain easily recognizable. The pastoral hortus conclusus transforms as the ladies’ laments illustrate their affinities with the gossips’ circles of the taverns. The song that initially “bursts” from a bird’s throat becomes in the very next line a chorus of birdsong that “dynnit” throughout the valley. The physicality attributed to sound is a consistent theme in the three monologues Dunbar creates for his gossips, a physicality that accords with the medieval Galenic theory that associates hearing with the sense of touch.
