Course Calendar
I. The Elocution Movement and the Art of Oral Delivery
Week OneT: Course Introduction
Free write on difference between silent and oral reading
Recitation activity with James Burgh’s musical notation of “To be or not to be”
Th: Hamlet, Act I
Mini-Lecture: Intro to Hamlet and "Hamlet in the Eighteenth Century”
Discussion
Week Two
T: Hamlet, Act II and III
Discussion
Mini-Lecture: “Eighteenth–Century Elocution and Shakespeare”
Assign “Sounding Shakespeare!” project
Th: Hamlet, Act IV
Discussion
“Who will rule Denmark” elections
Week Three
T: Hamlet, Act V
Discussion
Research workshop for “Sounding Shakespeare!”
Th: Sounding Shakespeare! Workshop
II. Poetry Memorization and Recitation
Week FourT: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Eolian Harp”; William Wordsworth, “On the Power of Sound”; Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”
Mini-Lecture: Intro to The Romantics
Discussion
Th: David Perkins, “How the Romantics Recited Poetry” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 3.4 (Autumn 1991): 655-71.
Recitation experiments and discussion
Sounding Shakespeare! Project due Friday at 5:00 pm.
Week Five
T: Felicia Hemans, “Casabianca”
Discussion
Mini-Lecture: “Schoolroom Recitation in the Nineteenth Century”
Assign: Re-Citations Paper
Th: Catherine Robson, “Case Study: Felicia Hemans, ‘Casabianca’” Heart Beats, Princeton: Princeton UP (2012): 126-190.
Discussion
Re-Citations poem selection
III. By the Hearthside: Reading Fiction Aloud
Week SixT: Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Ch. 1-13
Mini-Lecture: “The Victorian Periodical and Domestic Reading”
*Mark installment breaks in copies of Twist
Th: Oliver Twist, Ch. 14-27
Discussion and activities
Workshop/Check-In: Re-Citations Research
Week Seven
T: Oliver Twist, Ch. 28-41
Discussion
Th: Oliver Twist, 42-Close
Discussion
Mini-Lecture: Dickens’s Public Readings
Week Eight
T: Philip Collins, ed., “Sikes and Nancy,” The Public Readings. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975.
Discussion
Activity: Act out Dickens’s Marginalia
Th: Screenings: Twist on the Stage and Screen
Re-Citations Paper due on Friday at 5:00 pm
IV. Words on Wax: Reading Aloud after Sound Recording
Week NineT: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”; “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix”; Walt Whitman, “America”
Mini-Lecture: Sound Recording and the Phonograph
Listen to sound recordings of Tennyson, Browning, and Whitman
Discussion
Assign: Final Paper and Recitations
Th: John Picker, “The Recorded Voice from Victorian Aura to Modernist Echo,” Ch. 4 of Victorian Soundscapes. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. 110-145.
Discussion
Activity: Listening to Ourselves
The Recorded Voice in the 21st Century?
V. Class, Race, Gender and Speech in the Women's Elocution Movement, 1870-1915
Week TenT: George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, Acts I and II
Mini-Lecture: Women’s Elocution Movement, 1870-1915
Introduction to Shaw, Pygmalion, and discussion
Th: Pygmalion, Acts III-V
Discussion
Week Eleven
T: Screening: My Fair Lady
Paper conferences
Th: Screening: My Fair Lady
Paper conferences
Week Twelve
T: Beyond Reading: Tableaux, Delsarte, Mime, Imitations
Bring a sheet for your Delsarte toga!
Th: Dwight Conquergood, “Rethinking Elocution: The Trope of the Talking Book and Other Figures of Speech” Text and Performance Quarterly (October 2000)
Race, Elocution, and the “performance of whiteness naturalized”
VI. Reading Aloud in the Twenty-First Century
Week ThirteenThanksgiving Break
Week Fourteen:
T: Recitations!
Th: Recitations!
Final Paper Due Friday at 5:00 pm
Week Fifteen
T: Thomas Newkirk, “Reading Goes Silent,” Ch. 3 of The Art of Slow Reading. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2012.
Debate: Should we bring elocution and recitation back into education?
Th: Contemporary Comparisons
Bring in examples of 21st-century practices, media, art, etc. that you find in any way comparable to the traditions we’ve discussed in this class. Consider: how are they different? How are they similar? What do the differences tell us about reading now versus reading in the nineteenth century?
Week Sixteen
Final Exam Review and Preparation
Final Examination Date, Time, and Place TBA
