"Sweet was the sound": The Acoustic World of Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village

Abstract:In Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, one sense dominates the poem's return to the pastoralized past after the revelation of the village of Auburn's present, degraded state: sound. This essay analyzes Goldsmith's multi-faceted use of sound in The Deserted Village. In particular, I argue that Goldsmith's use of sound to describe a lost past evocatively underscores his political critique and his concerns about the disappearance of an entire way of life. The attempt to recreate a lost world through describing its now silenced sounds both necessitates and facilitates Goldsmith's depiction of the interrelated acts of remembering and imagining the past as a kind of labor—in contrast with the lack of depictions of physical labor that critics have frequently noted. Within the poem, auditory descriptions characterize Goldsmith's engagement not only with time, but also space, labor, and the role of poetry. Listening to the poem's use of sound opens up space for a fresh perspective on many of the longstanding debates that have dominated the poem's critical history. The poem's auditory aspects warrant further attention as a result.