Charles Kingsley Speaking in Public: Empowered Or at Risk‪?‬

This article 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. This article 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" (such as when he lectured on the dangers of degeneration), but at other times it caused public humiliation and emasculation. This article 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. **********