Provocative eloquence : theater, violence, and antislavery speech in the antebellum United States / Laura L. Mielke.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mielke, Laura L., author.

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), issuing body.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Theater--United States--History--19th century.

Theater.

Theater and society--United States--History--19th century.

Theater and society.

Antislavery movements--United States--History--19th century.

Antislavery movements.

Rhetoric--United States--History--19th century.

Rhetoric.

Slavery in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (297 pages)

Place of Publication:

[Ann Arbor, Michigan] : University of Michigan Press, [2019]

Summary:

In the mid-19th century, rhetoric surrounding slavery was permeated by violence. Slavery's defenders often used brute force to suppress opponents, and even those abolitionists dedicated to pacifism drew upon visions of widespread destruction. Provocative Eloquence recounts how the theater, long an arena for heightened eloquence and physical contest, proved terribly relevant in the lead up to the Civil War. As antislavery speech and open conflict intertwined, the nation became a stage. The book brings together notions of intertextuality and interperformativity to understand how the confluence of oratorical and theatrical practices in the antebellum period reflected the conflict over slavery and deeply influenced the language that barely contained that conflict. The book draws on a wide range of work in performance studies, theater history, black performance theory, oratorical studies, and literature and law to provide a new narrative of the interaction of oratorical, theatrical, and literary histories of the nineteenth-century U.S.

Contents:

Introduction. Provocative eloquence and the Antebellum scene

Edwin Forrest and heroic oratory

William Wells Brown, Mary Webb, and the emergence of dramatic suasion

Martyred eloquence and stagings of Dred

Portia's eloquence and the law in racial melodrama

Staging John Brown in eloquence and action.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on information from publisher.

ISBN:

9780472124374

0472124374

OCLC:

1076574280