Introduction: oratory and representation in the long nineteenth century

Abstract

ABSTRACT This introduction outlines how the authors of the present special issue share not an eloquence-centred but a more encompassing, interactive, embodied and experience-oriented interpretation of political performance as their heuristic prism. Through this lens, they analyze vocal expectations and deviations in political debates that took place in a few different national and imperial contexts of the long nineteenth century. Their approach reveals what parliamentarians, state-officials and/or journalists perceived as (un)-acceptable speech modes and, more broadly, as ‘proper’ audible and visible political representative practices of the time. Here, we introduce the theoretical and methodological framework employed by the contributors to explore speech as just one but integral part of political performance, and its audience as a multi-layered community, (in)efficiently reimagined, represented and embodied by those in power. Because the timeframes of these analyses mostly predate the focal point that has commonly been central to European histories of political discourse on representation, the authors have challenged themselves to consider important (dis)-continuities and dichotomies in European political culture.