Paperback : HK$239.00
In early America, every sound had a living, wilful force at its source. Sometimes these forces were not human or even visible. In this innovative work of cultural history, Richard Cullen Rath recreates in rich detail a world remote from our own, one in which sounds were charged with meaning and power. From thunder and roaring waterfalls to bells and drums, natural and human-made sounds other than language were central to the lives of the inhabitants of colonial America. Rath considers the multiple soundscapes shaped by European Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans from 1600 to 1770, and particularly the methods that people used to interpret and express their beliefs about sound. In the process he shows how sound shaped identities, bonded communities, and underscored - or undermined - the power of authorities. The book's evidence of the importance of sound in early America - even among the highly literate New England Puritans - reminds us of a time before a world dominated by the visual, a young country where hearing was a more crucial part of living.
In early America, every sound had a living, wilful force at its source. Sometimes these forces were not human or even visible. In this innovative work of cultural history, Richard Cullen Rath recreates in rich detail a world remote from our own, one in which sounds were charged with meaning and power. From thunder and roaring waterfalls to bells and drums, natural and human-made sounds other than language were central to the lives of the inhabitants of colonial America. Rath considers the multiple soundscapes shaped by European Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans from 1600 to 1770, and particularly the methods that people used to interpret and express their beliefs about sound. In the process he shows how sound shaped identities, bonded communities, and underscored - or undermined - the power of authorities. The book's evidence of the importance of sound in early America - even among the highly literate New England Puritans - reminds us of a time before a world dominated by the visual, a young country where hearing was a more crucial part of living.
"Those thunders, those roarings": the natural soundscape; from the sounds of things; no corner for the Devil to hide; on the rant; the howling wilderness; conclusions.
Richard Cullen Rath is Associate Professor of History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Long before Howard Dean howled in Iowa, Quakers in East Jersey were
'tainted with the Ranting Spirit.'... Among their buttoned-up
neighbors, the Puritans, these folks were considered possessed in
1675. But what's interesting, observes Richard Rath in this
fascinating study, 'How Early America Sounded,' is that all sounds
in those days indicated possession.... Rath connects the myriad
ways in which sounds exerted social influence.... Finally, and most
intriguingly, Rath says we may be living during just such a time
again, as the printed transfers some of its authority to a more
fluid and ephemeral cyberspace.
*The Christian Science Monitor*
Mr. Rath rehearses fascinating sound-details from the 17th and 18th
centuries, reminding us that what we hear, and how we hear it, is
no small part of experience.
*The Wall Street Journal*
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