Summary: | This book considers the varied careers of controversial Irish adventurer Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788) in terms of a continuum of phonocentrist obsession. Variously employed as an actor-manager, elocutionist, lecturer and educational theorist, Sheridan believed that the key to Irish national renewal and European cultural revival was the cultivation of the spoken word. His stewardship of the Smock Alley Theater in Dublin was marked by considerable innovation along with bitter controversy. His lectures on oratory provoked admiration and ridicule in roughly equal measure, yet he would have a profou.
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