Melodramatic Tactics: Theatricalized Dissent in the English Marketplace, 1800-1885

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Stanford University Press, 1995 - 303 pages
This pathbreaking work analyzes melodrama as not merely a theatrical genre but as a behavioral paradigm of the nineteenth century, manifest in the theater, in literature, and in society. It shows how the melodramatic mode reaffirmed the familial, hierarchical, and public grounds for ethical behavior and identity that characterized models of social exchange and organization.
 

Contents

INTRODUCTION Melodrame Mad Staging the Melodramatic Mode
1
Melodramatizing the Public Sphere
34
Oliver Twist and Melodramatic
77
Melodramatic Rhetoric in Victorias
133
The Melodramatic Mode
180
Melodramas Villains
223
Bibliography
275
Index
297
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About the author (1995)

Elaine Hadley is Assistant Professor of English and of the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

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