the conditions and format of the publication of deaf poetry also suggest that the political objectives of some nineteenth-century deaf poets could best be reached through including hearing readers. Deaf poets frequently combined their poetry with historical information and political statements about signed languages, which indicates that they understood their poetry as integral to defending sign language use. For example, Burnet’s book Tales of the Deaf and Dumb with Miscellaneous Poems (1835) is dominated by its preface and introductory section, which present information about signed languages and the experiences of deaf people; in fact, the literary pieces do not appear until page 150 of a 230-page book. As Burnet admits, the title of the book, which indicates its literary slant, “may make it necessary to inform the reader that nearly two-thirds of its contents consist of facts and documents” about “the principles, history, and present state of the art of instructing the deaf and dumb, statistics of the deaf and dumb and anecdotes of deaf and dumb persons” (3). While Burnet’s book title self-identifies as literary, the bulk of his text focuses on the political realities of signed languages and deaf education. Though Burnet acknowledges that “the poetical pieces at the end of the volume might appear to more advantage if published separately,” he expresses hope that they will not be overlooked when prefaced by the factual information he provides (4). Burnet, a deaf teacher of deaf children, published his book early in the nineteenth century when the oralist program was not as influential as it would come to be by the end of the century. Nevertheless, Burnet suggests in his preface that his goal is to inform his readers about the advantages of the manualist system. By uniting his poetry with this treatise on deaf education, Burnet indicates that he considers his literary production instrumental to this aim. Burnet was not alone in appending political, biographical, and historical information about deaf education to his poetry; other deaf poets, including Simpson and Kitto, likewise crafted texts that wove poetry into their reporting of facts about deaf history, education, and language use.
Some nineteenth-century deaf poets also included illustrations of the sign alphabet in their poetic publications in another implicit support of signed languages. Burnet’s book, for example, is not only a vehicle for celebrating signs in education (in both its preface and its poetry) but also an educational text for the propagation of signed languages among his readers. Burnet explains that the engraving on his book’s frontispiece of the one-handed manual alphabet was published so as “to enable any person to acquire the art of talking with the fingers in a few hours” (4). This incorporation of an illustration of a basic finger alphabet initially suggests that Burnet targeted his book to hearing people who did not know how to sign. But Burnet actually imagines his target audience as dual when he describes his intended readers as “the educated deaf and dumb, and those who take an interest in the education of this unfortunate class” (3). The image of the sign alphabet and the information about deafness seem aimed at those who are unfamiliar with deafness rather than deaf people themselves. The poetry itself seems suitable for both audiences as both a testament to deaf people’s abilities aimed at hearing people and a form of literary entertainment for deaf people.
Simpson, who taught at the Old Kent Road deaf school in London, likewise paired his poetry in Daydreams of the Deaf with an introductory preface on the social conditions of deaf people. He aimed “to draw attention to the real condition of [the very peculiar class of mankind to which I belong], and to correct the erroneous impressions and prejudices that exist regarding them” (v). Like Burnet, Simpson intended to educate hearing people about the lives and abilities of deaf people.122Kitto, who communicated primarily through the manual alphabet, included illustrations of the one-handed and two-handed manual alphabets (typically used in North America and Britain, respectively) in The Lost Senses, which also contains his poetry and information about deaf education (figures 1.1 and 1.2). Kitto enumerates the benefits of the manual alphabet and encourages his hearing readers to acquire the skill. The readers of Kitto’s and Burnet’s books are therefore not only learning about the competing systems of deaf education, while reading English poetry produced by these signers, but also are exhorted to learn the sign alphabet so they can communicate with deaf people on their own terms.
Celebrating Sign Language through Written Poetry
In addition to propagating a sign-based form of communication, the poetry written by signing deaf individuals contests commonly held beliefs about the characteristics of sign language because they displace the authority granted to speech and emphasize the communicative potential of the nonverbal and extra-oral. It was not only the sound theory of poetry that led to cultural skepticism about the poetic abilities of deaf people but also Victorian misunderstandings of the properties of signed languages. In opposition to the common alignment of language with speech in nineteenth-century culture, deaf signers understood that signed languages were linguistically sufficient. By and large, the poetry written by nineteenth-century deaf poets celebrates forms of communication outside of speech, even while the “speakers” sometimes bemoan their inability to hear and speak. Examining Kitto’s poem “Mary,” Searing’s “My Story,” and Burnet’s “Emma” demonstrates how these poets displaced the oral in favor of other forms of communication. While each of these poets had a different personal view on the merits of sign language, they were united in their attention to the communicative potential of the nonoral within their written texts.
The “speaker” of Kitto’s ten-stanza poem “Mary,” who bemoans the loss of his hearing and the “long silence” in which he has lived his life, celebrates the superior communicative abilities of oral communication. After enumerating a list of sounds unheard, the poem becomes a celebration of Mary’s eye and its ability to communicate with the “speaker,”
Mary, one sparkle of thine eye
I’d not exchange for all the gems
That shine in kingly diadems,
Or spices of rich Araby
(lines 94–97)
The “speaker” explains that he values Mary’s eyes because of their ability to communicate thoughts, hopes, and feelings to him, since “the human voice divine / Falls not on this cold sense of mine” (lines 66–67). Kitto writes,
But Mary, when I look on thee
All things beside neglected lie,
There is a deep eloquence to me
In the bright sparkle of thine eye.
How sweetly can their beamings roll
Volumes of meaning to my soul,
How long—how vainly all—might words
Express what one quick glance affords.
So spirits talk perhaps when they
Their feelings and their thoughts convey,
Till heart to heart, and soul to soul
Is in one moment opened all.
(lines 82–93)
The “speaker’s” synesthetic description of Mary’s eye as eloquent attributes the communicative powers of speech to the formerly mute gaze. Furthermore, the poem argues that the eye’s communicative power is superior in both “eloquence” and efficiency to cumbersome spoken words. Of course, Kitto’s celebration of the way in which lovers can communicate outside of words borrows from a wider cultural poetic discourse of romantic love that asserts the extralinguistic powers of communication that exist between lovers
