A concern for what can and cannot be talked about, and when and how much “talk” can or should occur, has long shaped 19th-century scholarship, if not defined Victorianists themselves. The 19th century is a period that involves subtle, but serious, revisions in the terms of cultural ideology — be it the transforming indexes of social and economic value or the increasing power vested in and mitigated by “discourse.” The Victorian era talks about talking, making it a fertile site for dwelling on discussion. In framing this year’s symposium around “talk,” we invite graduate scholars to dwell on the varying forms — dialogue, speech, column, talking cure, sermon, epistle, address — and mutations — chatter, gossip, propaganda, whispers, babble — of this cultural ground. (Please see the call for papers below.)

Description of locality, deliberate analysis of character or motive, demanded far too great an effort for his present condition. He kept as much as possible to dialogue; the space is filled so much more quickly, and at a pinch one can make people talk about the paltriest incidents of life.

— New Grub Street, George Gissing

Call for Proposals

Proposals Due: Jan. 12, 2025

The Princeton Victorian Colloquium and the Rutgers Nineteenth-Century Research Group invite paper proposals for the 16th annual Princeton-Rutgers Victorian Symposium: Talk Sense. Interested graduate students should submit a proposal of up to 300 words for a 15–20-minute presentation. Direct all submissions to [email protected] by January 12. The symposium will be held in-person at Princeton University.

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more,” declares the eponymous protagonist of Jane Austen’s Emma. Emma contradicts herself plainly, for she is, indeed, talking of love in this very instance. But Emma’s contradiction, by no means bland, makes legible a powerful irony between talk and value, sincerity and interiority: while Emma suggests that more talk means less love, she cannot help but express her thoughts out loud.

A concern for what can and cannot be talked about, and when and how much “talk” can or should occur, has long shaped 19th-century scholarship, if not defined Victorianists themselves. The 19th century is a period that involves subtle, but serious, revisions in the terms of cultural ideology — be it the transforming indexes of social and economic value or the increasing power vested in and mitigated by “discourse.” The Victorian era talks about talking, making it a fertile site for dwelling on discussion.

In framing this year’s symposium around “talk,” we invite graduate scholars to dwell on the varying forms — dialogue, speech, column, talking cure, sermon, epistle, address — and mutations — chatter, gossip, propaganda, whispers, babble — of this cultural ground. We ask: What did “talking” mean to the Victorians? How was “talk” conceived differently from other forms of expression, such as art, reportage, and writing? How was “talk” conceived differently from other kinds of utterances? What did Victorians talk about privately or publicly? What are the social and economic valences of certain kinds of “talk” and kinds of “talkers”? How do major characters’ “talk” compared to narrators and minor characters? How do various voices “talk” to or against each other in Victorian poetry? Is “talking” a useful means of solving social — public and private — conflicts? Or does it appear a decadent pursuit of the Victorian mind and milieu?

These questions are intended to suggest, but in no way limit, the kinds of talking points that submissions may explore. We encourage submissions that imagine the 19th century capaciously. The following is a non- comprehensive list of possible topics:

• Censorship
• Gossip, “mere” talk
• Talking cure and psychoanalysis
• Speech and gender, class, race
• Multilingualism
• Life writings and anthropology
• Empire and circulation
• Confession and revelation
• Heteroglossia
• Talk vs. action; talk vs. plot
• Cacophony: chatter, babble,
  nonsense, and noise
• Repressive hypothesis
• Stutters, lisps; silences and em dashes
• Apostrophe and address
• Interpellation
• Reputation
• Evangelizing
• The prosaic and the sublime
• Quotation and citation
• Periodicals, ephemera
• Communication technologies
• Speech Acts
• Reviews and criticism
• Class and cultural capital