Taking the notion of the ‘mechanic’ as its starting point, this chapter outlines how an interest in the mechanic and scientific aspects of speech production is a pervasive feature of Romantic-era treatments of spoken utterance. The chapter investigates the numerous contemporary senses of the term ‘mechanic’, to highlight these senses’ common concern with physical movement, whether of the human hands, a constructed machine, or the material world. It examines how Romantic innovations in the theory of speech production which present utterance as a form of motion – of bodies, of machines, and of matter itself – combine, engage with, and react to traditions of materialist philosophy and elocution teaching and explores how such studies of speech rely on blending knowledge-based fields of study with traditionally non-theoretical practices including medicine and elocution.

Through a case study of the ‘speaking machine’ constructed by doctor-poet Erasmus Darwin between 1770 and 1771, this chapter aims to demonstrate that Romantic-era projects on the mechanics of speech were both new and controversial in their potential to undermine the religious, political, and philosophical status quo. It explores how Darwin’s simultaneous investigations of anatomy and machinery are suggestive of a materialist approach to the human, and particularly the speaking, body and how his materialist model of speech production simultaneously allows and is allowed by Darwin’s dual identity as philosopher and physician which informs the interdisciplinarity of his thought and practice. The chapter concludes by making the case that Darwin’s multidisciplinary approach to speech underpins both politicised reactions to his work and his own account of the role that a materialist understanding of speech and the voice can play in the development and improvement of society.

This chapter offers a new reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which argues that Shelley draws on Darwin’s, Thelwall’s, and Percy Shelley’s depictions of materialist, active speech in the novel’s portrayal of speech production. This coda makes the case that Shelley’s novel posits speech production and acquisition as a thoroughly interdisciplinary project and suggests that the Romantic concerns with physicalised models of impressive vocal power, traced throughout this book, present a new way of reading the creature’s speech as a radical act of self-governance.

In this chapter I make recommendations for change in the university, breaking down the disciplines and their “holding” departments – especially for organizing undergraduate education but also for research – while also opening up other university structures, from the conventional barriers between high school and college to those that prevent genuine collaboration among universities. I argue for more institutional differentiation of postgraduate institutions – a goal that is frustrated by overreliance on rankings and that could be facilitated by creating more networks linking and coordinating work across institutions, while also creating easier on and off ramps for students throughout their undergraduate educations (and beyond, to genuine “lifelong” learning). I suggest ways to break down the “guild”-like nature of the faculty described by Kerr, as well as to control some of the costs of higher education while not cutting back on research interests of faculty or for that matter on the working conditions of faculty.