{"id":3951,"date":"2020-04-14T10:13:25","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T14:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/?p=3951"},"modified":"2020-05-13T10:18:23","modified_gmt":"2020-05-13T14:18:23","slug":"a-one-man-show-how-audience-is-impacted-by-compression-of-the-communication-circuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/2020\/04\/14\/a-one-man-show-how-audience-is-impacted-by-compression-of-the-communication-circuit\/","title":{"rendered":"A One Man Show: How Audience is Impacted by Compression of the Communication Circuit\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In my last entry, I wrote about the ways that Dr. C.W. Larison exploited Sylvia Dubois in his publication of her biography as part of his attempt to cultivate esteem in the small, developing fields of spelling reform and orthoepy that captured his interest and became intellectual passions during his lifetime. In considering the audience of\u00a0 <\/span>Sylvia Dubois (Now 116 Years Old): A Biografy of The Slav who Whipt her Mistres and Gand her Fredom, <\/span><\/i>I noticed both implicit and explicit indications of intended audience. Larison\u2019s behavior around writing and distributing the book implicitly express, through disregard for Dubois\u2019 narrative, that she and those with a vested interest in her voice are not his target audience. If Dubois and those invested in her story as she told it were a target audience, Larison should have included her in the process of publishing and editing and obtained distinct consent to write the narrative instead of stealing it and subverting the power of the narrative as Dubois told it by complicating its writing with a spelling framework that required understanding of conventional English to learn (Rowe-Crowder, 1). The fact that Dubois could never read the narrative she told and that Larison, who supposedly worked to improve access to literacy, made no attempt to extend this access to people of color or to disrupt the systematic oppression that gatekeeping literacy posed to black Americans at the time of the book\u2019s publishing sends a strong statement about who the book was published for, and even more who the author felt could be abused in the process of publishing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course there are dangers in assuming too much about authorial intent because it does not tell the entire story of a typical book\u2019s trajectory. However, in the case of <\/span>Sylvia Dubois (Now 116 Years Old): A Biografy of The Slav who Whipt her Mistres and Gand her Fredom, <\/span><\/i>authorial intent boasts an outsized role in telling the story of the book\u2019s history because the book bucks the established trends of Darnton\u2019s Communications Circuit in its significantly condensed course of production. Although the inside of the circuit and the outside influences feeding into it remain separate from Larison, the roles in the circle itself are dominated by Larison almost exclusively. Larison is the author, publisher, editor, shipper, seller, binder, and, in many cases, repository of the biography since few copies sold and some remained at the academic institutions Larison operated. An<\/span> entry <\/span><\/a>in an 1890 edition of <\/span>American Newspaper Directory<\/span><\/i> credited Larison with writing and selling his own books about orthoepy and offered information about a monthly publication Larison also attempted to distribute independently. From multiple sources, I was only able to find an official title for the Silvia Dubois books, as the others were presumeably published in such small quantities due to their lack of popularity that they aren’t available. The journal, which also did poorly in terms of sales and distribution, was a more academic publication specifically about orthoepy and its alphabets. Perhaps the Silvia Dubois book is geared toward audiences that value narrative as a point of connection and interest to attract people to Larison’s other works. Because he is responsible for so much of the process of books he writes reaching an audience that he has to advertise to specifically, Larison\u2019s intended audience and the personal attributes and experiences informing how he imagines this audience are deeply significant because very few others are involved that might change the path the book takes in reaching its readers. Larison\u2019s explicit words say quite a lot about the book\u2019s intended audience, and I will explore this more in the next paragraph, but his actions and their implicit messages say just as much if not more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Darnton’s Communications Circuit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In terms of express suggestions of audience, at the end of the text, Larison writes (in conventional English rather than phonetics),<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0The elements of Orthoepy was prepared to be used as a text book in the Academy of Science and Art, at Ringos, N.J. A few volumes were sent to the editors of leading journals of education and to such distinguished teachers as are eminent for scholarship in the field of English literature. The reception of this book has been so cordial, and the criticisms upon its plan and the matter it contains has been so favorable, that I have concluded to place it in the market.<\/span><\/p>\n

This passage illustrates Larison\u2019s intentions for <\/span>Sylvia Dubois (Now 116 Years Old): A Biografy of The Slav who Whipt her Mistres and Gand her Fredom, <\/span><\/i>which were for the book to serve as a scholarly work not originally intended for the greater public. Although there is a small-scale public distribution in a way, the book\u2019s primary purpose was to demonstrate spelling reform for academic journals who might be interested in publishing in their limited intellectual circles. The unique communications circuit is especially relevant here because it impacts who is included in the \u201cmarket\u201d Larison attempts to open access to the book to. Because Larison is responsible for all book sales, publicity, and production, it is unlikely that the book would reach audiences outside of those immediately connected to Larison in some way for quite some time as books were potentially passed along. This means that the academic audience Larison tailored the book to most likely remained his primary audience, especially because the <\/span>East Amwell Township Walking tour Guide<\/span><\/i><\/a> reports that Larison\u2019s attempts at marketing and selling his work largely failed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Rowe-Crowder, Agatha (2018) “Authority and Identity in Sylvia Dubois: A Biografy of the Slav who Whipt Her Mistres and Gand Her Fredom by C.W. Larison,” <\/span>Liberated Arts: a journal for undergraduate research<\/span><\/i>: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1 , Article 4.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Available at: https:\/\/ir.lib.uwo.ca\/lajur\/vol5\/iss1\/4<\/span><\/p>\n

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  In my last entry, I wrote about the ways that Dr. C.W. Larison exploited Sylvia Dubois in his publication of her biography as part of his attempt to cultivate esteem in the small, developing fields of spelling reform and orthoepy that captured his interest and became intellectual passions during his lifetime. In considering the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8020,"featured_media":3952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3951"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4242,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951\/revisions\/4242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}