Chautauqua
Chautauqua (
History
The First Chautauquas
In 1874,
The educational summer camp format proved popular for families and was widely copied by several Chautauquas. Within a decade, "Chautauqua assemblies" (or simply "Chautauquas"), named for the location in New York, sprang up in various North American locations. The Chautauqua movement beginning in the 1870s may be regarded as a successor to the Lyceum movement from the 1840s.[7] As the Chautauquas began to compete for the best performers and lecturers, lyceum bureaus assisted with bookings. Today, Lakeside Chautauqua and the Chautauqua Institution, the two largest Chautauquas, still draw thousands each summer season.
Independent Chautauquas
Independent Chautauquas (or "daughter Chautauquas") operated at permanent facilities, usually fashioned after the Chautauqua Institute in New York, or at rented venues such as in an amusement park.[8][9] Such Chautauquas were generally built in an attractive semirural location a short distance outside an established town with good rail service. At the Chautauqua movement's height in the 1920s, several hundred of these existed, but their numbers have since dwindled.[10][11]
Circuit Chautauquas
"Circuit Chautauquas" (or colloquially, "Tent Chautauquas") were an itinerant manifestation of the Chautauqua movement founded by Keith Vawter (a Redpath Lyceum Bureau manager) and Roy Ellison in 1904.
Reactions to tent Chautauquas were mixed. In We Called it Culture, Victoria and Robert Case write of the new itinerant Chautauqua:
The credit–or blame–for devising the Frankenstein mechanism which was both to exalt and to destroy Chautauqua, the tent circuit, must be given to two youths of similar temperament, imagination, and a common purpose. That purpose, bluntly, was to "make a million".[16]
Frank Gunsaulus attacked Vawter:
"You're ruining a splendid movement," Gunsaulus roared at Keith Vawter, whom he met at a railroad junction. "You're cheapening Chautauqua, breaking it down, replacing it with something what [sic] will have neither dignity nor permanence."[17]
In Vawter's scheme, each performer or group appeared on a particular day of the program. "First-day" talent would move on to other Chautauquas, followed by the "second-day" performers, and so on, throughout the touring season. By the mid-1920s, when circuit Chautauquas were at their peak, they appeared in over 10,000 communities to audiences of more than 45 million; by about 1940 they had run their course.[18]
The Chautauquan
The Chautauquan was a magazine founded in 1880 by Theodore L. Flood. First printed in Jamestown, New York, the magazine soon found a home in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where Flood bought a printing shop. It printed articles about Christian history, Sunday school lessons, and lectures from Chautauqua. By the end of the decade, the magazine was printing articles by well-known authors of the day (John Pentland Mahaffy, John Burroughs, Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen), and serial educational material (including courses by William Torrey Harris and Arthur Gilman). Strongly allied with the main organization, it had easy access to popular authors ("the big fish in the intellectual sea", according to Frank Luther Mott), but Flood was wary of making his magazine too dry for popular taste, and sought variety. By 1889 the magazine changed course radically and dropped the serials that were Chautauqua's required reading, expanding with articles on history, biography, travel, politics, and literature. One section had editorial articles from national newspapers; another was the "Woman's Council Table", which excerpted articles often by famous women writers, though all this material remained required reading for the Chautauqua program. Contemporary publications regarded the magazine highly, and Mott writes, "its range of topics was indeed remarkable, and its list of contributors impressive". Flood stopped editing the magazine in 1899, and journalist Frank Chapin Bay, schooled by Chautauqua, took over; the magazine became less a general magazine and more the official organ of the organization.[19]
Lectures
Lectures were the mainstay of the Chautauqua. Until 1917, they dominated the circuit Chautauqua programs. The reform speech and the inspirational talk were the two main types of lecture until 1913.[20] Later topics included current events, travel, and stories, often with a comedic twist.[citation needed]
The most famous speech
The most prolific speaker (often booked in the same venues with three-time presidential candidate
Get rich, young man, for money is power and power ought to be in the hands of good people. I say you have no right to be poor.[21]
Other speakers
Religious expression
Christian instruction, preaching, and worship were a big part of the Chautauqua experience. Although the movement was founded by
Early religious expression in Chautauqua was usually of a general nature, comparable to the later Moral Re-Armament movement. In the first half of the 20th century, fundamentalism was the subject of an increasing number of Chautauqua sermons and lectures. But the great number of Chautauquas, as well as the absence of any central authority over them, meant that religious patterns varied greatly among them. Some were so religiously oriented that they were essentially church camps, while more secular Chautauquas resembled summer school and competed with vaudeville in theaters and circus tent shows with their animal acts and trapeze acrobats.
One example,
Competition with vaudeville
In the 1890s, both Chautauqua and
At the turn of the 20th century, vaudeville managers began a push for more "refinement", as well as a loosening of Victorian-era morals from the Chautauqua side. Over time, as vaudeville became more respectable, Chautauqua became more permissive in what it considered acceptable acts. The boundaries between the two began to blur.[26]
Music
Music was important to Chautauqua, with
Opera became a part of the Chautauqua experience in 1926, when the American Opera Company, an outgrowth of the Eastman School of Music, began touring the country. Under the direction of Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing, the AOC presented five operas in one week at the Chautauqua Amphitheater.[27] By 1929, a permanent Chautauqua Opera company had been established.[28]
Political context
Chautauquas can be viewed in the context of the populist ferment of the late 19th century. Manifestos such as the "
But the Chautauqua movement usually avoided taking political stands as such, instead inviting public officials of all major political parties to lecture, assuring a balanced program for the members of the assembly. For example, during the 1936 season at the
Typical Chautauqua circuit
A route taken by a troupe of Chautauqua entertainers, the May Valentine Opera Company, which presented Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado during its 1925 "Summer Season", began on March 26 in Abbeville, Louisiana, and ended on September 6 in Sidney, Montana.[31]
In popular culture
The Chautauqua style of teaching is a recurring motif in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.[2]
The Trouble with Girls, a 1969 film starring Elvis Presley, was based on the 1960 novel Chautauqua by Day Keene and Dwight Vincent Babcock.[32]
See also
- Chautauqua Circle
- Chautauqua Girl, a Canadian telefilm that takes place in the context of the 1920s Chautauqua movement
- Lecture circuit
- Lyceum
- Lyceum Movement
- Oregon Lyceum
- TED Talks
References
- ^ Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century – Collection Connections – For Teachers (Library of Congress) Archived May 28, 2010, at the Wayback Machine Loc.gov. Retrieved on 2011-03-28.
- ^ ISBN 0688171664. 25th Anniversary Edition.
- ^ Ables, Kelsey (13 August 2022). "What is Chautauqua? The site of the Rushdie attack has a long history". The Washington Post. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
- ^ Cooper, George (2015-07-25). "The Daily Record: Roosevelt lauds Chautauqua as 'typical of America at its best'". The Chautauquan Daily. Retrieved 2023-10-09.
- ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 19.
- ^ "History of Chautauqua in Florida". Archived from the original on July 25, 2008. Retrieved November 3, 2010.
- ^ "Lyceum movement | American education | Britannica".
- ^ The Chautauquan. M. Bailey, Publisher. 1905.
- ^ Services, DNC Web. "amusement-parks-gallery-1 - RockfordReminisce.com". RockfordReminisce.com. Retrieved 2018-01-19.
- ^ Parlette, Ralph Albert (1922). The Lyceum Magazine.
- ^ Ohio, Lakeside (2019-03-17). "The Chautauqua Movement". Lakeside Ohio. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
- ISBN 0-252-01584-3.
- ISBN 9781890461041.
- ^ Page, Walter Hines; Page, Arthur Wilson (1921): The World's Work ...: A History of Our Time Vol. XLII. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company.
- ^ "Uncle Cyp & Aunt Sap". Valley Morning Star. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
- ISBN 9781406775440. Retrieved 10 February 2018.
- ^ Case, Victoria; Case, Robert O. (1948). We Called it Culture: The Story of Chautauqua. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. pp. 51, 73.
- ^ "What Was Chautauqua". www.gearhartseitz.com. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
- ISBN 9780674395527.
- ^ ISBN 0-7864-0213-X. Retrieved January 8, 2011.
- ^ Smith Zimmermann Heritage Museum: Chautauqua History Archived October 29, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Gentile, John (1989). Cast of One: One-person Shows from the Chautauqua Platform to the Broadway Stage. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. p. 43.
- ^ Lehndorff, John (2023-07-06). "Hearing history". Boulder Weekly. Retrieved 2023-09-03.
- ^ ""The Fourth American Institution"".
- JSTOR 25110497.
- ISBN 0-252-01584-3.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Chautauqua Opera – History. Opera.ciweb.org. Retrieved on 2011-03-28 from http://opera.ciweb.org/history/.
- ^ "The Chautauqua Opera Company". Chautauqua Opera Company.
- ^ People's Party Platform, Omaha Morning World-Herald, 5 July 1892
- ^ "Chautauqua! Elling House hosts first Chautauqua of 2019 | The Madisonian". www.madisoniannews.com. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
- ^ May Valentine Opera Co. in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado" Archived January 5, 2016, at the Wayback Machine from a University of Iowa Library website that's part of American Memory archives
- ^ Worth, Fred L.; Tamerius, Steve D. (1992). Elvis: His Life from A to Z. New York: Wings Books. pp. 229–301.
Bibliography
- Hurlbut, Jesse Lyman (1921): The Story of Chautauqua. New York: G.P. Putman's Sons.
- What was Chautauqua? University of Iowa Libraries, accessed: 2006-03-18.
- Galey, Mary (1981): The Grand Assembly: The Story of Life at the Colorado Chautauqua. Boulder, Colorado: First Flatiron Press, ISBN 0-9606706-0-2.
- Gentile, John S (1989): Cast of One: One-Person Shows from the Chautauqua Platform to the Broadway Stage. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-01584-3.
- Gould, Joseph Edward (1961): "The Chautauqua Movement". Albany, New York. State University of New York Press, ISBN 0-87395-003-8.
- Pettem, Silvia (1998): Chautauqua Centennial, a Hundred Years of Programs. http://www.silviapettem.com/books.html
- Rieser, Andrew (2003): The Chautauqua Moment: Protestants, Progressives, and the Culture of Modern Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 0231126425.
- Strother, French (September 1912). "The Great American Forum: Chautauqua and the Chautauquas in Summer and the Lyceum In Winter". The World's Work: A History of Our Time. XXIV: 551–564. Retrieved 2009-07-10.
- Merkel, Diane on behalf of the Walton County Heritage Association (2008): Images of America DeFuniak Springs. Arcadia Publishing, ISBN 0-7385-5407-3.
External links
- Chautauqua Institution Archived 2020-05-10 at the Wayback Machine
- The Great Lecture Library
- Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century
- Colorado Chautauqua, Boulder,CO
- Greenville Chautauqua Society
- New Piasa Chautauqua, Chautauqua, IL
- Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Chautauqua
- Program catalog, 1905 Chautauqua, Rockford, IL