| The term "active literacy" refers to the early modern social practices that carried the recorded word off the page and into realms of action associated with literate ideas, values, knowledge, and behavior. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain, the primary vehicles for active literacy were literary performances, or what I call "active literature": textually, artistically, and socially scripted events such as preaching, elocutionary displays, and my primary example, public theater. Entertaining and accessible, stage plays and other theatricals used elements of production (e.g., moveable scenery, elaborate costumes, improved lighting, expressive acting styles) to command spectators' "readerly" attention, regardless of whether or not theatergoers possessed conventional literacy abilities. Despite---or perhaps because of---active literature's prevalence and appeal, it posed a serious threat to early modern authors: writers who, from Ben Jonson to Samuel Johnson, strove to elevate their own art by defining literature as special reading materials produced exclusively for schooled and sophisticated, silent and solitary readers.; Traditionally, the relationships between live performance and recorded (written or printed) texts have been understudied, both in quantitative, empirical approaches to literacy and in literary scholarship. Strong favoritism toward texts was already in place in 1790, when Edmund Burke envisioned an alternative to the republic of letters: an "active republic of literature" comprised of interrelated texts and events. Adopting Burke's provocative phrase, this dissertation writes the history of this active republic by focusing on the fifth canon of rhetoric---delivery---and examining the interrelationships between two different modes of cultural expression: performance and writing. Chapter one defines active literacy as a historical and critical concept, and chapters two and three examine active literacy in action, tracing early modern theater's transformation into a readerly medium. Chapters four and five examine the antitheatrical attitudes that formed in---and against---the active republic of literature, and the conclusion considers their legacy for contemporary scholars of literature, rhetoric, and performance. Against this backdrop, the active republic of literature provides a tool for historical understanding and offers insight into our own critical and pedagogical practices as well as our daily encounters with multiple literacies, media, and modes of communication. |
