The Cosmopolitan Lyceum : Lecture Culture and the Globe in Nineteenth-Century America - Tom F. Wright

The Cosmopolitan Lyceum

Lecture Culture and the Globe in Nineteenth-Century America

By: Tom F. Wright (Editor)

Paperback | 30 December 2013

At a Glance

Paperback


$66.25

or 4 interest-free payments of $16.56 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 15 to 25 business days

When will this arrive by?
Enter delivery postcode to estimate

From the 1830s to the 1900s, a circuit of lecture halls known as the “lyceum movement” flourished across the United States. At its peak, up to a million people a week regularly attended talks in local venues, captivated by the words of visiting orators who spoke on an extensive range of topics. The movement was a major intellectual and cultural force of this nation-building period, forming the creative environment of writers and public figures such as Frederic Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Anna Dickinson, and Mark Twain.

The phenomenon of the lyceum has commonly been characterised as inward looking and nationalistic. Yet as this collection of essays reveals, nineteenth-century audiences were fascinated by information from around the globe, and lecturers frequently spoke to their fellow Americans of their connection to the world beyond the nation and helped them understand “exotic” ways of life. Never simple in its engagement with cosmopolitan ideas, the lyceum provided a powerful public encounter with international currents and crosscurrents, foreshadowing the problems and paradoxes that continue to resonate in our globalised world.

This book offers a major reassessment of this important cultural phenomenon, bringing together diverse scholars from history, rhetoric, and literary studies. The twelve essays use a range of approaches, cover a wide chronological timespan, and discuss a variety of performers both famous and obscure. In addition to the volume editor, contributors include Robert Arbour, Thomas Augst, Susan Branson, Virginia Garnett, Peter Gibian, Sara Lambert, Angela Ray, Evan Roberts, Paul Stob, Mary Zboray, and Ronald Zboray.
Industry Reviews
An excellent book. Perhaps its greatest strength is that it participates in several current scholarly conversations: not only discussions of the nature of cosmopolitanism and its relationship to nationalism but also exchanges about oratory, audiences, travel writing, transatlantic and trans-pacific intellectual life, and the relationship between oral and print cultures."" - Joan Shelley Rubin, author of Cultural Considerations: Essays on Readers, Writers, and Musicians in Postwar America.

More in Social & Cultural History

Dark Emu : Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture - Bruce Pascoe
Night : Penguin Modern Classics - Elie Wiesel

RRP $22.99

$17.75

23%
OFF
The Origins of Totalitarianism : Penguin Modern Classics - Hannah Arendt
Normal Women : 900 Years Of Making History - Philippa Gregory
The Dawn of Everything : A New History of Humanity - David Graeber
Homo Deus : A Brief History of Tomorrow - Yuval Noah Harari

RRP $24.99

$23.75

Blitzed : Drugs in Nazi Germany - Norman Ohler

RRP $22.99

$21.90

The End of Everything : How Wars Descend into Annihilation - Victor D Hanson
The Voynich Manuscript - Raymond Clemens

RRP $82.95

$55.00

34%
OFF
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive - Jared Diamond
Old Vintage Melbourne, 1960-1990 - Chris Macheras

RRP $55.00

$39.90

27%
OFF
Introduction to Medieval Europe 300-1500 : 4th Edition - Peter Hoppenbrouwers
Melbourne Ghost Signs - Sean Reynolds

RRP $59.99

$41.25

31%
OFF
Listen In : How Radio Changed the Home - Beaty Rubens

RRP $59.99

$43.25

28%
OFF
The Message - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Paperback

RRP $36.99

$33.25

10%
OFF