Overview

This book studies how popular theater can act as the vehicle for the construction of American ideology. It looks at five popular nineteenth-century melodramas that took as their subjects important issues in ""American life: Metamora and the Indian Question"", ""The Drunkard and the temperance movement"", ""Uncle Tom's Cabin and slavery"", ""My Partner and the American West"", and ""Shenandoah and the Civil War"". By examining the plays and their popular success and by reconstructing the social and political backdrop against which they were viewed, Mason shows how they functioned in the social discourse of the time. They were, he argues, expressions of what Americans wanted other Americans, and the world at large, to believe that they believed about America as such. Although acts of communal belief in, or affirmation of, certain cultural myths, these melodramas were acted out on the contested stage of American ideological debate. They show mainstream America's attempt to grapple with the key social issues of the day and to stage the dramatic emergence of the American myth.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jeffrey D Mason
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
Imprint:   Indiana University Press
Weight:   0.500kg
ISBN:  

9780253336866

ISBN 10:   0253336864
Pages:   268
Publication Date:   01 December 1993
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Preface 1. Constructing Americam Ideology Ideology and Myth The Sentimental Vision Melodrama America/America 2. Metamora (1829) and the OIndianO Question King PhilipOs War Savagism The Romantic Warrior Edwin Forrest, American Metamora Indian Removal The SachemOs Audience 3. The Drunkard (1844) and the Temperance Movement The Politics of Drinking in Antobellum America The Temperance Message The Temperance Narrative The Drunkard The Operations of Discourse 4. Uncle TomOs Cabin (1852) and the Politics of Race The Slave System Abolitionism and Racism The Colonization Movement The Good Samaritan The Sentimental Argument Racialism and Missis Harriet Breakdown The Safety of the Stage 5. My Partner (1879) and the West The West The Discourse of California My Partner The Pastoral Mines The OChineeO Paradise Lost 6. Shenandoah (1889) and the Civil War The Myth of the War The VeteransO Myth on Stage The Rationale of War War as Romance Shenandoah Reconstruction on Stage 7. Staging the Myth of America The Discourse and Conventions of America America, the Sentimental The American Space American History as Melodrama Notes Bibliography Index

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