Notwithstanding the critical consensus to agree to disagree on the definition of the dramatic monologue, the question of the auditor's function in the genre seems more central to our understanding of the form than has hitherto been acknowledged. (1) As the critical history of the auditor shows, the auditor is a defining feature of the dramatic monologue not only because how one theorizes the genre depends significantly on how one theorizes the auditor-function, but conversely because how one theorizes the auditor-function significantly alters one's theory of the dramatic monologue. For instance, where the genre is defined as gratuitous speech serving the monologist's purpose of self-understanding or the genre's purpose of self-revelation, the auditor is deemed to be superfluous. This is as true of theories that define the genre by its effect of ironic character revelation--that is, the unintended revelation of the speaker's hidden self or true character--as it is of theories that define the genre by its challenge to that view of a hidden, essential, and authentic self. For the latter, the genre is defined not by its revelation of the speaker's self, but by its revelations about the speaking self: that it is not the unified, autonomous or sovereign subject of the Cartesian "I" or the unconstrained lyrical "I" of the Romantic ideal, but the fragmented and contingent product of text and context. (2) For both, the auditor is superfluous, since it is the discrepancy between what the speaker says and "what he intends to say" or "set[s] out to mean" that produces both types of self-revelation. (3) This definition of the genre thus depends on the superfluity of the auditor as much as this view of the auditor is determined by this definition of the genre. Likewise, where the auditor is defined as the necessary immediate and active interlocutor of the monologue, the theory of the genre must change: the dramatic monologue becomes a form of rhetorical performance, whether for the purpose of communication (Dorothy Mermin) or transformation, be it through apostrophic swerves of voice (W. David Shaw) or performative acts of speech (Cornelia Pearsall). (4) Thus, the critical split between the view of the auditor as superfluous to the form and the view of the auditor as entirely necessary should not be regarded as simply a difference of opinion; the different theories of the genre that result reveal that at stake in the question of the auditor is the very question of genre: what the dramatic monologue is, what it does, and how it does it. Focusing on the poetry of Augusta Webster, a poet distinguished in the nineteenth century for her dramatic monologues and in the twentieth for her unconventional auditors, this essay reopens the question of the auditor's function in the genre, but answers it by a different method. (5) Where previous studies have focused on the canonical dramatic monologues and the so-called "major" Victorian poets, their theories of the auditor-function have turned on the distinction between the immediate or empirical auditor and the implied or ideal, between auditors that are "human, adult, alive, awake, physically present, and able to hear and respond," in Mermin's useful definition, and those that are not. (6) For instance, Robert Langbaum had famously argued that the auditor's physical presence in the poem is superfluous since the speaker speaks ultimately to himself--"ultimately across the dramatic situation and across the ostensible auditor to some projection of the speaker"--while Loy D Martin effectively doubled the auditor's superfluity by arguing that the auditor was not just superfluous when present, but implied even when absent For Martin, "[a]ll dramatic monologues at least fantasize a listener." else, as T S. Eliot had put it, "why should a man put on fancy dress and a mask only to talk to himself?" (7) For Mermin, in contrast, an auditor that is physically present and capable of responding shifts the genre's purpose from the ironic character revelation posited by earlier theories, where the auditor's physical presence "makes so little difference," to the question of the possibility and pragmatics of speech and communication, where the auditor's presence means everything (Langbaum, p. …

中文翻译：

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生死大事：戏剧独白的听觉功能

尽管在戏剧独白的定义上达成了批判性共识，但对于我们对这种形式的理解而言，审计员在该类型中的功能问题似乎比迄今为止所承认的更为重要。(1) 正如审计师的批判史所表明的那样，审计师是​​戏剧独白的一个决定性特征，不仅因为一个人如何将类型理论化在很大程度上取决于一个人如何将审计师功能理论化，而且相反，因为一个人如何将审计师理论化——功能显着改变了一个人的戏剧独白理论。例如，如果体裁被定义为服务于独白者自我理解目的或体裁自我揭示目的的无偿演讲，则审计员被认为是多余的。对于通过讽刺性格揭示的效果来定义体裁的理论来说也是如此——也就是说，无意中揭示了说话者隐藏的自我或真实性格——就像通过对那种观点的挑战来定义体裁的理论一样一个隐藏的、本质的和真实的自我。对于后者，体裁的定义不是它对说话者自我的揭示，而是由它对说话的自我的揭示：它不是笛卡尔“我”或不受约束的抒情“我”的统一、自主或主权主体浪漫主义的理想，而是文本和语境的支离破碎和偶然的产物。(2) 对于两者来说，审计员都是多余的，因为这是说话者所说的与“他打算说的”或“表达的意思”之间的差异 这会产生两种类型的自我启示。(3) 因此，这种类型的定义取决于注册会计师的多余性，因为审计师的这种观点是由这种类型的定义决定的。同样，当审计员被定义为独白的必要直接和主动对话者时，体裁理论必须改变：戏剧独白成为一种修辞表演形式，无论是为了交流（多萝西·默敏）还是为了转变，它通过声音的撇号转向（W. David Shaw）或演讲的表演行为（Cornelia Pearsall）。(4) 因此，注册会计师认为形式上多余的观点与注册会计师认为完全必要的观点之间的关键分歧不应被视为简单的意见分歧；由此产生的不同类型的理论表明，审计师问题的关键在于类型问题：戏剧独白是什么，它做什么，以及它是如何做的。聚焦于奥古斯塔韦伯斯特的诗歌，这位诗人在 19 世纪以其戏剧性的独白而闻名，在 20 世纪以她的非传统审计师而著称，这篇文章重新审视了审计师在该体裁中的功能问题，但以不同的方法回答了它。(5) 以前的研究集中在经典的戏剧独白和所谓的“主要”维多利亚时代诗人，他们的审计功能理论转向了直接或经验审计员与隐含或理想之间的区别，审计员之间那些是“人类的、成人的、活着的、清醒的、实际存在的，