Cultural Narratives

Description

This collection of original essays examines debates on how written, printed, visual, and performed works produced meaning in American culture before 1900. The contributors argue that America has been a multimedia culture since the eighteenth century. According to Sandra M. Gustafson, the verbal arts before 1900 manifest a strikingly rich pattern of development and change. From the wide variety of indigenous traditions, through the initial productions of settler communities, to the elaborations of colonial, postcolonial, and national expressive forms, the shifting dynamics of performed, manuscript-based, and printed verbal art capture critical elements of rapidly changing societies.

The contributors address performances of religion and government, race and gender, poetry, theater, and song. Their studies are based on texts—intended for reading silently or out loud—maps, recovered speech, and pictorial sources. As these essays demonstrate, media, even when they appear to be fixed, reflected a dynamic American experience.

Contributors: Caroline F. Sloat, Matthew P. Brown, David S. Shields, Martin Brückner, Jeffrey H. Richards, Phillip H. Round, Hilary E. Wyss, Angela Vietto, Katherine Wilson, Joan Newlon Radner, Ingrid Satelmajer, Joycelyn Moody, Philip F. Gura, Coleman Hutchison, Oz Frankel, Susan S. Williams, Laura Burd Schiavo, and Sandra M. Gustafson

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• 18th Century
• 19th Century
• Modern
• HISTORY
• América
• Culture of the United States
• Modern history
• American studies
• General officer
• General
• American
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 mars 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268080617
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Cultural Narratives Textuality and Performance in American Culture before 1900 Edited by Sandra M. Gustafson and Caroline F. Sloat

Cover art L-R: [1] An opening from , ed. Experience Mayhew (Boston, 1720). [2] 2 (1775): opp. p. 640. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ61-79. [3] Illustration from James Redpath’s edition of William Wells Brown’s (1864), reprinted from Redpath’s (1859). Courtesy of Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. [4] (Richmond, VA: Ayres and Wade, 1863). Image courtesy of Boston Athenaeum.

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, I N 4 6 5 5 6 undpress.nd.edu Cover design by James F. Brisson

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Textuality and Performance in American Culture before 1900

Edited by Sandra M. Gustafson and Caroline F. Sloat

CULTURàL NàRRàTIVEs

CULTURàL NàRRàTIVEs

Textuality and Performance in American Culture before 

edited by SànDRà M. GUsTàfsOn and CàROLInE F. SLOàT

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2010 by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cultural narratives : textuality and performance in American culture before 1900 / edited by Sandra M. Gustafson and Caroline F. Sloat. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-268-02976-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-268-02976-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Mass media—United States—History. I. Gustafson, Sandra M. II. Sloat, Caroline. P92.U5C845 2010 302.23'0973—dc22 2010004290

This book is printed on recycled paper.

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Introduction Caroline F. Sloat

Hand Piety; or, Operating a Book in Early New England Matthew P. Brown

Poor Performance: Incompetence in Conversation, Manuscript, and Print in British America David S. Shields

Addressing Maps in British America: Print, Performance, and the Cartographic Reformation Martin Brückner

Print, Manuscript, and Staged Performance: Dramatic Authorship and Text Circulation in the New Republic Jerey H. Richards

From Performance to Print in the Native Northeast Phillip H. Round

Beyond the Printed Word: Native Women’s Literacy Practices in Colonial New England Hilary E. Wyss

Sarah Wentworth Morton and Changing Models of Authorship Angela Vietto

e Path of a Play Script: Louisa Medina’s Nick of the Woods Katherine Wilson

“e Speaking Eye and the Listening Ear”: Orality, Literacy, and Manuscript Traditions in Northern New England Villages Joan Newlon Radner

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Print Poetry as Oral “Event” in Nineteenth-Century American Periodicals 200 Ingrid Satelmajer

Silenced Women and Silent Language in Early Abolitionist Serials Joycelyn Moody

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Straddling the Color Line: e Print Revolution and the Transmission, Performance, and Reception of American Vernacular Music 240 Philip F. Gura

Secret in Altered Lines: e Civil War Song in Manuscript, Print, and Performance Publics Coleman Hutchison

e State between Orality and Textuality: Nineteenth-Century Government Reports and “Orature” Oz Frankel

Authentic Revisions: James Redpath and the Promotion of Social Reform in America, – Susan S. Williams

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Reading the Image: Visual Culture as Print Culture and the Performance of a Bourgeois Self 319 Laura Burd Schiavo

e Emerging Media of Early America Sandra M. Gustafson

Contributors Index

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367 369

INTRODUCTiON

C a r o l i n e F . S l o a t

Personal narrative—the memoir form—appears to be grow- ing in popularity as a contemporary publishing phenomenon. James Atlas observed in  that “if the moment of inception is hard to lo- cate, the triumph of memoir is now established fact. Consider the evi- dence: nearly two dozen memoirs are being published this spring, with more to come, supplementing the  titles—by one book review editor’s estimate—published last year.” In the intervening decade, Atlas himself transitioned from critic and journalist to memoirist and publisher of bi- ographical works. As compelling as the memoir is to writers and readers today, it is a form that has a long history but that, thanks to the scholarly study known as the history of the book, is also nding a future for itself. e exibility of the memoir enables its writer to describe and re- ect upon a particular series of events. When published, it takes advan- tage of a culture of publication that is comparable to the model of the dispersed, regional—oen rural—printing oce that might set in type and print a rst-person account for its author to distribute and sell as part of a narrative performance (Fabian). e memoir is the genre of choice for authors representing cultures ranging from high and low and topics ranging from dark to light. Contemporary memoirs describe pub- lic lives and those of ordinary men and women, as theNew York Times best-seller list for a recent week indicates. Of the top sixteen hardcover books (including “booklike objects”) listed, twelve are memoirs, among them those of Alan Greenspan, Clarence omas, and Valerie Plame

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Wilson; those of popular musical performers and other celebrities (read: sex, drugs, and rock and roll); and a story of the impact of an adopted elderly dog on a family. Additionally, ten of the top sixteen paperback nonction titles are memoirs. at the writers of many of these mem- oirs have appeared on other media “book talk” programs also speaks to the robustness of this speaking genre, especially as part of the circuit of publication, in our culture. When a memoir is selected as the basis for an interview, the moderator of the program can probe the author and the text for additional narrative and cultural reection. e collection of papers that follows indicates ways in which per- sonal accounts have enough cultural currency to be a historical category as well. ey attract literary scholars and historians who wish to recover and interpret aspects of past life and culture in fresh and exciting ways that might not, without close examination, be apparent. Recent scholar- ship that integrates personal narrative and memoir to create new histo- ries of communication includes the work of Sandra M. Gustafson, Mary Kelley, and Laurel atcher Ulrich, among others. Gustafson takes notice of spoken performance as a category that cuts across race, gen- der, and class inEloquence Is Power: Oratory and Performance in Early America(). By using and extending the scholarly methodology known as the history of the book and broadening its meaning, even as she identies the changing meaning of oratory, Gustafson shows that forms of communication that at another time might have been passed over as powerful expressions are indeed episodes in which power can be identied. InEloquence Is Power, she draws on a variety of mem- oirs to extend the denition of public speaking by ascribing to all oral and colloquial performance a value and power comparable to the tradi- tional power of the printed page—the Bible, the law—and the function of literacy as these have been traditionally understood. e premise of Kelley’sLearning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republicis that in post-Revolutionary and antebellum America public speech was a civic action that was not reserved only for male youth. Women’s education also included instruction in read- ing and speaking, which were used to the extent possible as entrees into the public arenas of civic life and the market economy. Ine Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth, Ul- rich imagines a society in which the masculine world of politics and the

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church is the backdrop to women’s handwork, interpreting activity with the shuttle and the loom and with the needle and woven bers as cre- ative expression that can be read as history. In each of these studies, the use of personal narrative helps break down the wall between the private and public spheres by extending the semiotics of reading and literacy into new arenas. Recent studies such as these suggest that the trajectory of scholarship on literacy may at one time have been too dependent on the concept of progress represented by the printing press. ey challenge the role of this powerful and xed technology as a replacement for the more ephemeral forms of speech and manuscript and introduce the idea that material objects can also be read. To test notions such as these, Gustafson built on her interest in the changing meaning of eloquence by envisioning a conference that would be part of a series sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society’s Program in the History of the Book in American Culture. She developed a call for papers for a conference titled “Histories of Print, Manuscript, and Performance in America before .” Of the conference she wrote: “e verbal arts in this period manifest a strik- ingly rich pattern of development and change. From the wide variety of indigenous traditions, through the initial productions of settler commu- nities, to the elaborations of colonial, postcolonial, and national expres- sive forms, the shiing dynamics of performed, manuscript-based, and printed verbal art capture critical elements of rapidly changing societies. ese three varieties of linguistic media competed with, complemented, and shaped one another in unpredictable ways that have only begun to be described.” e papers reproduced here in revised form were origi- nally presented at the conference, which was held in Worcester, Massa- chusetts, during – June . ese essays imagine a modern histor y of the manuscript and the spoken word without privileging the print- ing press, while still aording it a transformative role in the evolution of texts. e authors address performances of religion and government, race and gender, poetry, theater, and song. eir studies are based on texts—intended for reading silently or aloud—maps, recovered speech, and pictorial sources, including an early technology for viewing images at home. In the absence of printed words that can be attributed to an actual speaker, scholars consider other documentary evidence. In a par- ticularly rich instance, Joycelyn Moody describes her search for evidence