Melodrama : The Cultural Emergence of a Genre

by Edited by Michael Hays and Anastasia Nikolopoulou

• ISBN13: 9780312221270
• ISBN10: 0312221274
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1999-02-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Using the term "melodrama" as an abstract category to describe almost any literary mode--from nineteenth-century novels to 20th-century films--modern critics have obscured the genre's historical and cultural functions as well as the nature of its specific appeal to working-class audiences. To rectify this situation, the essays in this innovative and international collection redirect attention to the historical, social, and cultural milieu in which melodrama emerged.

Author Biography

Michael Hays is the author and editor of a number of books, including The Public and Performance and Critical Conditions.

Anastasia Nikolopoulou teaches drama and literary criticism at the University of Cyprus.

Table of Contents

Introduction--Michael Hays and Anastasia Nikolopoulou
Part I: Grand Narrative(s): Variations on a Theme
Soldiers of the Queen--Michael Booth
The Empire Right or Wrong--Jim Davis
From Melodrama to Realism--Thomas Postlewait
Melodramatic Contingencies--Kornelia Tancheva
Part II: Generic Patterns and Social Constructs
On the Origins of the English Melodrama in the Tradition of Bourgeois Tragedy and Sentimental Drama--Lothar Fietz
The Return of Martin Guerre in an Early Nineteenth Century French Melodrama--Barbara T. Cooper
Historical Disruptions--Anastasia Nikolopoulou
Part III: Radicalism Contained
He Never Should Bow Down to a Domineering Frown--Marvin Carlson
The Ideological Tack of Nautical Melodrama--Jeffrey N. Cox
Radicalism in the Melodrama of the Early Nineteenth Century--Hartmut Ilsemann
Part IV: Gender, Class, Culture
Parlour and Platform Melodrama--David Mayer
What the Heroine Taught, 1830-1870--Léon Metayer
Representing a "Great Distress"--Julia Williams & Stephen Watt

Introduction--Michael Hays and Anastasia Nikolopoulou
Part I: Grand Narrative(s): Variations on a Theme
Soldiers of the Queen--Michael Booth
The Empire Right or Wrong--Jim Davis
From Melodrama to Realism--Thomas Postlewait
Melodramatic Contingencies--Kornelia Tancheva
Part II: Generic Patterns and Social Constructs
On the Origins of the English Melodrama in the Tradition of Bourgeois Tragedy and Sentimental Drama--Lothar Fietz
The Return of Martin Guerre in an Early Nineteenth Century French Melodrama--Barbara T. Cooper
Historical Disruptions--Anastasia Nikolopoulou
Part III: Radicalism Contained
He Never Should Bow Down to a Domineering Frown--Marvin Carlson
The Ideological Tack of Nautical Melodrama--Jeffrey N. Cox
Radicalism in the Melodrama of the Early Nineteenth Century--Hartmut Ilsemann
Part IV: Gender, Class, Culture
Parlour and Platform Melodrama--David Mayer
What the Heroine Taught, 1830-1870--Léon Metayer
Representing a "Great Distress"--Julia Williams & Stephen Watt