Lecturing the Atlantic : speech, print, and an Anglo-American commons, 1830-1870

In the early nineteenth century, the public lecture emerged as one of the Anglo-American world's most important cultural forms. On both sides of the Atlantic, audiences and performers transformed a cultural practice with origins in the medieval cloister into an unexpected flashpoint medium of public life. In the United States, as part of the "lyceum movement," lecturing became crucial to literary and political life, multiple social reform movements, and the rise of public intellectualism, offering speakers from across the cultural spectrum a platform from which to promote their ideas and explain contemporary life. Lecturing the Atlantic argues for a new interpretation of this neglected institution. It reorients our understanding of the lyceum by seeing it as an international and cross-media phenomenon patterned by cultural investment in an "Anglo-American commons." Tom F. Wright shows how some of the mid-century North Atlantic world's most enduring cultural figures, such as Frederick Douglass, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as fascinating marginal voices such as Lola Montez and John B. Gough, used lecture hall discussions of a transatlantic imaginary to offer powerful commentaries on slavery, progress, comedy, order, tradition, and reform. Crucially, this world was a matter as much of print as performance, since as the book reveals, a remarkable culture of newspaper commentary allowed oratory to resonate far beyond the realm of the lecture hall. Through a series of inventive readings of Anglo-American relations as understood through performance and print re-mediation, Wright connects the transatlantic turn in cultural studies to important recent debates in media theory and public sphere scholarship. Lecturing the Atlantic speaks to those interested in the literature and history of Victorian Britain and the early US, to students of performance, communication and rhetoric, and all those seeking a deeper understanding of nineteenth-century public culture. __Lecturing the Atlantic__ argues for a new interpretation of the public lecture, as one of the nineteenth-century Anglo-American world’s most important cultural forms. It reorients our understanding of lecturing during the “lyceum movement” by seeing it as an international and cross-media phenomenon patterned by cultural investment in an “Anglo-American commons.” series of case studies shows how some of the midcentury North Atlantic world’s most enduring cultural figures, such as Frederick Douglass, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as fascinating marginal voices such as Lola Montez and John B. Gough, used lecture hall discussions of a transatlantic imaginary to offer powerful commentaries on slavery, progress, comedy, order, tradition, and reform. Through a series of readings of Anglo-American relations as understood through performance and print re-mediation, Wright connects the transatlantic turn in cultural studies to important recent debates in media theory and scholarship on the public sphere and nineteenth-century public culture. Lecturing The Atlantic Is A Re-interpretation Of The 'public Lecture' As One Of The Most Important Cultural Forms Of The Nineteenth Century Anglo-american World. Wright Shows How Key Figures Including Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson And William Makepeace Thackeray Used The Lecture Hall To Explore Anglo-american Relations And Themes Of Progress And National Identity--provided By Publisher. The Us Lecture Hall And An Anglo-american Commons -- Britain And Anti-slavery : Frederick Douglass's Transatlantic Rhetoric -- Britain As Order : Listening To Ralph Waldo Emerson's England -- Britain As Prophecy : Horace Greeley, Horace Mann And The Choreography Of Reform -- Britain And Kinship : William Makepeace Thackeray As Cultural Commons -- Britain And Wartime Unity : Lola Montez And John B. Gough's Cultural Diplomacy -- Epilogue. Tom F. Wright. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 201-240) And Index. Cover 1 Lecturing the Atlantic 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of Figures 8 Acknowledgments 10 Note on the Terminology of “England” and “Britain” 12 Introduction 16 1. The American Lecture Hall and an Anglo-​American Commons 24 2. Britain and Antislavery: Frederick Douglass’s Transatlantic Rhetoric 64 3. Britain as Order: Listening to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “England” 96 4. Britain as Prophecy: Horace Mann, Horace Greeley, and the Choreography of Reform 132 5. Britain and Kinship: William Makepeace Thackeray as Cultural Commons 158 6. Britain and Wartime Unity: Lola Montez and John B. Gough as Cultural Diplomats 186 Epilogue 214 Notes 216 Index 256