Broun briefly discusses the debate between the perennialists and modernists in regard to the formation of the nation (pp. 280-282). Being a critical historian sensitive to the continuity and disruption as experienced at that time, he does not come down to the side of the perennialists but goes for the longue dureé approach by Anthony Smith. 'If more emphasis is placed on the up-to-date critical insights into sources that have been developed by medievalists, then there is a real chance that hitherto unexpected vistas will be revealed through engaging with the aspirations and assumptions of our forbears ' (p. 282). This appears to echo the spirit behind the investigation of everyday nationhoodtrying to capture the lived experiences and reality of a nation. Perhaps medievalists are as radical as those favour the bottom-up approach to the study of the social. ATSUKO ICHIJO

This article focuses on the acoustic aspect of parliamentary government in nineteenth-century Britain, demonstrating the continued importance of speech and audibility for representatives in the reformed House of Commons. Notions of what constituted a proper parliamentary voice changed as electoral reforms, the rise of the “fourth estate,” and scientific discoveries in laryngology influenced evaluations of political speech. Most notably, rhetorical brilliance and a theatrical delivery lost legitimacy and were increasingly replaced by a “polite” and conversational style. The vocal sounds of modern, polite representatives were extensively transcribed and commented upon by journalists and satirists. By the end of the nineteenth century, the rise of the written press made the careful management of the vocal organs more, rather than less, politically relevant.

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The modern history of disability, and of speech impediments in particular, has largely been written as one of medical discourse and (more recently) of social and cultural imaginations. The pathology of speech appears as an embodied, but ultimately intangible, issue due to the transient nature of sound itself. Once produced, it disappears, and seems to escape memory. In this text, stammering is approached as an object of material history. Drawing on the "paper trail" left by medical experts, popular entertainers and a handful of stammerers' experiences, this paper examines the ways in which stammering was made material in the nineteenth century. The impediment not only provided (pseudo) medical actors with a lucrative market for various curative objects and practices, but also propelled the (sheet-)music business. Stammerers themselves appear in this story of materialization and market as both agents and objects. The cheap self-cures, medical manuals, sheet music and (later) recordings that were produced not only for, but also by, them, show how easily the impediment was aligned with the modern consumer's identity and how the persona of the stammerer was, ultimately, lodged in the Western collective memory in very material ways.

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