2 - Couplets and conversation

Summary

Writing and talking were closer in the early eighteenth century than they are today - and so were poetry and prose. A variety of institutions, but especially the urban coffee houses which hosted continuous conversation about public events and issues, encouraged the blurring of social distinctions we take for granted: between public and private, for example, or between the working and leisure classes, and especially between conversation and written texts. Texts - whether newspapers, pamphlets about current events, or printed books - were quoted extensively and became the basis for much of the public conversation, and (in turn) conversation and its colloquial and dialogic habits often migrated into print. It is not that the oral/written distinction had no meaning, but the two modes were mixed so regularly in daily practice that oral conversation took on many of the stylistic habits associated with formal writing, and the written word often was conversational in tone and habit. Poetry, where tradition set strong metrical and formal expectations, often found the cadences of conversation appealing as a vocal counter-measure.