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Mark Twain's Popularity among American Elocutionists
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Journal Article
Mark Twain's Popularity among American Elocutionists
2022
Overview
\"3 In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (188 5), Twain added mendacity to ineptitude with the king and the duke incorporating \"yellocution\" lessons and abysmal Shakespeare performances into their various scams.4 While not all elocutionists could properly suit the action to the word and the word to the action, competent professionals were in the public eye throughout Twain's life. Alexander Graham Bell's (1847-1922) career exemplifies the elocutionists' effort to make the study of voice and movement scientific.12 Bell closely studied the physiology of voice production, and his analytical approach to elocution led to better methods for teaching the deaf and eventually to the invention of the telephone. Despite the positive features of elocution, Twain remained skeptical.15 Elocutionist Franklin Haven Sargent tutored Twainâeuro™s lecture partner, George Washington Cable; Twain, with the goal of strengthening his voice before touring, also considered taking âeuroœa few lessonsâeuro from Sargent.16 But Twain had been unimpressed by the effect the training had on Cable and believed that Cableâeuro™s reading was marred by âeuroœself-complacency, sham feeling & labored artificiality.âeuro 17 Twain said of Cable, in what Bernard De Voto characterized as one of his eruptions, \"unhappily he prepared himself for his public work by taking lessons from a teacher of elocution, and so by the time he was ready to begin his platform work he was so well and thoroughly educated that he was merely theatrical. \"26 A more accurate guide to content of antebellum school exhibitions can be seen in Bronsons Elocution (1845), which includes \"Liberty or Death\" but offers \"Richard II\" as a more profound expression of grief and sorrow than Gay's talent allowed.27 David Clinton Owens has shown that the other pieces Twain included were properly contemporary.
Publisher
Mark Twain Journal
Subject
