Laugh Tracks: Comic Declamation in Germany, 1800-1920: Lecture with Dr. Mary Helen Dupree

In the nineteenth century, oral reading practices were a key part of how middle-class Germans and Austrians experienced the German-language literary canon. Through declamatory performances, recitation anthologies, and handbooks that explained the rules of speaking, readers and listeners could cultivate their aesthetic taste while experiencing a sense of belonging in the German “reading nation.” While scholars have often emphasized the drama and pathos of nineteenth-century reading practices, Dr. Dupree’s talk argued that humor and comedy were equally essential to the development of a uniquely German culture of literary declamation outside the theater. In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the popularity of comic declamation skyrocketed, fueled by the proliferation of recitation anthologies that featured comic readings to be performed in the middle-class home. The heightened emphasis on comedy in declamation created new opportunities for minoritized individuals, such as women and German Jews, to participate in the German literary communication network.

Dr. Mary Helen Dupree is Associate Professor of German at Georgetown University and Vice President of the Lessing Society and is currently serving as Interim Chair and Director of Graduate Studies in the German Department. Her research interests include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German literature and culture, gender, performance studies, and sound studies. Her first book, The Mask and the Quill. Actress-Writers in Germany from Enlightenment and Romanticism, was published by Bucknell University Press in 2011. She is the co-editor, with Sean B. Franzel, of the edited volume Performing Knowledge, 1750-1850 (De Gruyter, 2015). Her current book project (under review) traces the history of German-language literary declamation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.