Lecturing Women in British Fiction, Periodicals and Public Orality, 1870-1910

The First Speech
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-89519-2
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)

Buch, Englisch, 296 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

Reihe: The Nineteenth Century Series

This book examines the emergence of women as audiences and speakers on the British metropolitan lecture circuit and in mass print representations from 1870 to 1910. Bringing together research on Victorian lecturing, periodicals, voice studies and the cultural history of feminism, it sheds new light on the interdependence of orality and print and the rise of the British women’s movement.

Sifting through the archives of lecture institutions (the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, the London Institution and the Royal Institution), penny fiction weeklies and feminist weeklies, New Woman and suffrage novels, autobiographical writings and rhetorical manuals, this book reconstructs the changing mediascape of late Victorian London and treats speech events, in print and on site, as catalysts for democratic participation. Undertaking an archaeology of women’s presence in the lecture hall, it explores conservative fantasies in fiction of the female speaking automaton alongside new writings that transformed women orators from objects of sensation into public agents. By analysing women’s collective self-education in rhetoric and elocution, this book traces the emergence in political fictions of key narrative tropes of oral performance: the surprise encounter in the lecture hall, the moment of conversion during a lecture and the symbolic ‘first speech’ of new suffrage recruits.

Drawing on new and extensive primary research, this book intervenes in several flourishing fields of inquiry: literary studies, oral culture studies, sound and voice studies, performance studies, periodical studies and Victorian and Edwardian cultural history.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Zwierlein, Anne-Julia

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprechwissenschaft, Rhetorik
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Installations-, Aktions-, Computer- und Videokunst
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Women in Cultures of Public Speech and Mass Print; 1. Archaeology of Voices: Women Audiences and Speakers at London Lecture Venues; 2. Periodical Education: Lecture-Going and Social Causeries in London Penny Weeklies; 3. Romance and Sensation:Spicing up the Lecture Circuit in Penny Weekly Fiction; 4. Serial Spectacle: Getting Used to Women Lecturers in Penny Weekly Fiction; 5. Collective Vocality: Mass Print and Speech in Anti-Feminist, New Woman and Suffrage Writing; 6. First Speech: Training Women Speakers in Suffrage Writing, Rhetorical Manuals and  Feminist Weeklies; Coda: Transmediation – ‘Speech or Silence’; Appendix; Index

Über Autor(innen)

Anne-Julia Zwierlein is Professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Regensburg, Germany, specialising in Early Modern and Victorian Studies. She has published work on Milton, early modern city comedy, literature and science, literature and imperialism, the novel of formation and Victorian oral cultures.