Charles Kingsley Speaking in Public: Empowered or at Risk?

Abstract

Juxtaposes an article by Roland Barthes with accounts of Charles Kingsley speaking in public to argue that the platform is potentially a site of risk as well as power. Suggests that Kingsley was engaged in fashioning himself as a mediator in the pulpit and at the lectern; at times, this mediatory role seemed useful and “manly,” but at other times caused public humiliation and emasculation. Considers the social practice of rhetoric, the different spaces in which Kingsley spoke, and the active role of the audience in an attempt to recuperate something of the dynamics of the spoken word in nineteenth-century culture.