The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word

by Marian Wilson Kimber

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" 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Feminism, Music

352 pages, Paperback

Published January 19, 2017

Reviews

[Harriet M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A meticulously researched and thoughtful look at a fascinating and rarely revisited era of women's performance in the US.

[Arelis Uribe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro que tuve que leer para la U, en el que aprendí que las elocucionistas son mujeres blancas burguesas que aprenden a recitar como una forma de profesionalización. Bello. Viva la spoken-word.

[T.R. Ormond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fastidiously researched, Kimber's book opens the door on the long-forgotten world of elocution and the place of women's culture and performance in an era of changing attitudes about women's place before the lectern and on the stage. Definitely intended for specialists. It is thoroughly notated and therefore it is an excellent springboard for additional research on related topics. I found the introduction excellent and I also found the pages on Delsarte instructive.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating look at a history that has been in the background this whole time. So much of Elocutionists and the work they did continues in interesting ways today. But because this trend was so feminized, it's almost completely forgotten.

[Mills College Library]

808.54 K497 2017