“The critical perspectives often applied to oratorical cultures in our own day…have been remarkably author-centered. That is, they have tended to attribute declines in oratorical cultures to the actions of responsible agents who can and do act freely, but they take only marginally into account how the range of individual freedom for action might have been influenced and progressively reshaped by institutionalizing, professionalizing forces” (209). “We must ask about how rhetorical values were institutionalized and examine what happened to them and to the people they touched when they were; here, we must pay particular attention to how local goods and ends are redefined in the process of centralization by which the institution provides for its material survival. Thus we must consider both material conditions by which Vawter's decisions and activities were constrained and key concepts and principles from which they took their meaning” (210). The authors explore how Keith Vawter institutionalized the Chautauqua oratorical circuit so that the events were controlled by local managers. Additionally, because the events began to be guided by audience reactions, the events moved from educational lectures to entertainment. “As a medium of democratic education, as an oratorical culture, Chautauqua had once exerted a distinctive influence, both broad and uniquely personal; but once it was transformed into primarily a medium of entertainment, it grew less and less able to compete” with new technologies like movies and radio (213).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Tags
All
|