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Chris Mustazza – The Poetic Record: The Poet’s Voice as Data During the Period of Early Sound Record
Event by: Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR
Location: The Institute for Czech Literature, v.v.i., Na Florenci 1420/3, Praha 1
About event
Srdečně zveme v úterý 29. září 2026 od 16 hodin na přednášku Chrise Mustazzy (University of Pennsylvania). Příspěvek nazvaný The Poetic Record: The Poet’s Voice as Data During the Period of Early Sound Recording přednese v horním sále naší pražské budovy (Na Florenci 3, Praha 1).
Vstup na přednášku v angličtině je zdarma a bez registrace.
Anotace:
This talk presents the earliest attempts to record and collect the voices of poets, during the relative nascence of sound recording. An unexpected and fascinating finding is that the earliest literary audio archives were produced by experimental linguists in speech labs meant for the study of dialects and regional accents. The linguists who made recordings—which included the earliest or only known recordings of eminent poets such as Ezra Pound, Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein, James Weldon Johnson, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost—saw the recordings, primarily, as data, rather than as literary relics or artefacts. We will look at and listen to some of these early recordings and place them within the intersecting though distinct histories of literary studies and experimental phonetics, working to historicize the varying definition and teleology of poetry audio over the course of the century. The talk leads into our current moment of large scale digital audio archives like PennSound and the emergence of AI voices.
Vstup na přednášku v angličtině je zdarma a bez registrace.
Anotace:
This talk presents the earliest attempts to record and collect the voices of poets, during the relative nascence of sound recording. An unexpected and fascinating finding is that the earliest literary audio archives were produced by experimental linguists in speech labs meant for the study of dialects and regional accents. The linguists who made recordings—which included the earliest or only known recordings of eminent poets such as Ezra Pound, Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein, James Weldon Johnson, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost—saw the recordings, primarily, as data, rather than as literary relics or artefacts. We will look at and listen to some of these early recordings and place them within the intersecting though distinct histories of literary studies and experimental phonetics, working to historicize the varying definition and teleology of poetry audio over the course of the century. The talk leads into our current moment of large scale digital audio archives like PennSound and the emergence of AI voices.