The Tragic Orator

With public speaking at the height of its cultural worth in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the concept of the tragic infected even the orator. Laura L. Mielke considers the figure of the tragic (or martyred)... [ view full abstract ]

With public speaking at the height of its cultural worth in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the concept of the tragic infected even the orator. Laura L. Mielke considers the figure of the tragic (or martyred) orator as a feature of popular American culture, from elocutionary handbooks to the theatrical stage. Thanks to Thomas Jefferson’s Logan and the Romantic trope of the doomed Indian, oratorical tragedy attached in particular to the Native American speaker. Revisiting the performances in particular of Seneca leader Red Jacket and Pequot activist William Apess, Mielke will explore Native American challenges to the suffocating outline of the tragic orator, ones that thrusts the failure of words back on a national audience that readily breaks faith through false speech.