The elocutionists Women, music, and the spoken word

Marian Wilson Kimber, 1960-

Book - 2017

"Emerging in the 1850s, elocutionists recited poetry or drama with music to create a new type of performance. The genre--dominated by women--achieved remarkable popularity. Yet the elocutionists and their art fell into total obscurity during the twentieth century. Marian Wilson Kimber restores elocution with music to its rightful place in performance history. Gazing through the lenses of gender and genre, Wilson Kimber argues that these female artists transgressed the previous boundaries between private and public domains. Their performances advocated for female agency while also contributing to a new social construction of gender. Elocutionists, proud purveyors of wholesome entertainment, pointedly contrasted their "acceptable&qu...ot; feminine attributes against those of morally suspect actresses. As Wilson Kimber shows, their influence far outlived their heyday. Women, the primary composers of melodramatic compositions, did nothing less than create a tradition that helped shape the history of American music"--

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Subjects
Published
Urbana : University of Illinois Press [2017]
Language
English
Main Author
Marian Wilson Kimber, 1960- (author)
Physical Description
xvii, 324 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780252040719
9780252082221
Contents unavailable.
Review by Choice Review

An elocution history written by a music scholar is refreshing. By focusing on music and women, Kimber (Univ. of Iowa) brings new understanding to the subject and sheds light on resources that may be unfamiliar to rhetoricians. Kimber does a good job of documenting the rise of elocution and the influence of musician and teacher François Delsarte, including tableaux to movement and musical scores in the period from the late-19th century to the mid-20th century. These women elocutionists performed mainly men's words. Responses to the genre ranged from praise to ridicule (was this really art?). But performance gave women a voice, allowed them to shed their corsets and wear Greek gowns, and engaged them in healthy exercise. This comprehensive documentation of people and events brings to light a performance genre that has been consigned to archives and is no longer extant. That said, remnants of the art form exist today in such women performance poets as Kate Tempest and Hedwig Gorski, and in rap--which suggests the need to redefine the genre. Including photos and lengthy lists of accompanied recitations and musical compositions, this is an important resource for those interested in speech and drama, rhetoric, music, and women's studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Therese B. Dykeman, Fairfield University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.