Eloquence Is Power: Oratory and Performance in Early America (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American Histo)

Sandra Gustafson examines the verbal art of speech in sacred, political and diplomatic forms as it was created and practiced in colonial America and the early republic. She demonstrates that, in the distinctly American interaction of cultures, contact and conflict among Europeans, native Americans, and Africans gave particular significance and complexity to the uses of the spoken word.