Overview

This newly commissioned series of essays by leading scholars is the first volume to offer both an overview of the field and also current emerging critical views on the history, form, and influence of English melodrama. Authoritative voices provide an introduction to melodrama's early formal features such as tableaux and music, and trace the development of the genre in the nineteenth century through the texts and performances of its various sub-genres, the theatres within which the plays were performed, and the audiences who watched them. The historical contexts of melodrama are considered through essays on topics including contemporary politics, class, gender, race, and empire. And the extensive influences of melodrama are demonstrated through a wide-ranging assessment of its ongoing and sometimes unexpected expressions - in psychoanalysis, in other art forms (the novel, film, television, musical theatre), and in popular culture generally - from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.

Full Product Details

Author:   Carolyn Williams (Rutgers University, New Jersey)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.60cm , Length: 22.70cm
Weight:   0.570kg
ISBN:  

9781107479593

ISBN 10:   1107479592
Pages:   330
Publication Date:   04 October 2018
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction Carolyn Williams; Part I. Histories of English Melodrama: 2. Early English melodrama Matthew Buckley; 3. Gothic melodrama Michael Gamer; 4. Nautical melodrama Ankhi Mukherjee; 5. Domestic melodrama Christine Gledhill; 6. Theatres and their audiences Jim Davis; Part II. Melodramatic Technique: 7. Melodramatic music Michael V. Pisani; 8. Melodramatic acting George Taylor; 9. Stagecraft, spectacle, and sensation Hayley Jayne Bradley; Part III. Melodrama and Nineteenth-Century English Culture: 10. Melodrama and gender Katherine Newey; 11. Melodrama and class Rohan McWilliam; 12. Melodrama and empire Marty Gould; 13. Melodrama and race Sarah Meer; Part IV. Extensions of Melodrama: 14. Melodrama and the realist novel Carolyn Williams; 15. Melodrama and early [silent] film David Mayer; 16. Moving picture melodrama Jane M. Gaines; 17. Melodrama and the modern musical Sharon Aronofsky Weltman; 18. Melodrama and psychoanalysis Peter Brooks; 19. Metamodern melodrama and contemporary mass culture Juliet John.

Reviews

Author Information

Carolyn Williams is Professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University, New Jersey. She is the author of Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre, Parody (2010), Transfigured World: Walter Pater's Aesthetic Historicism (1990) and the co-edited collection of essays (with Laurel Brake and Lesley Higgins), Walter Pater: Transparencies of Desire (2003).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions