Melodramatic Imagination - Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess

Klappentext In this lucid and fascinating book, Peter Brooks argues that melodrama is a crucial mode of expression in modern literature. After studying stage melodrama as a dominant popular form in the nineteenth century, he moves on to Balzac and Henry James to show how these "realist" novelists created fiction using the rhetoric and excess of melodrama - in particular its secularized conflicts of good and evil, salvation and damnation. The Melodramatic Imagination has become a classic work for understanding theater, fiction, and film. Zusammenfassung This text argues that melodrama is a crucial mode of expression in modern literature. After studying stage melodrama as a dominant popular form in the 1800s! the author looks at Balzac and Henry James! to show how these "realist" novelists created fiction using rhetoric and excess of melodrama.

Product details

• Authors: Peter Brooks, Peter (Yale University) Brooks
• Publisher: Yale University Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.11.1995
• EAN: 9780300065534
• ISBN: 978-0-300-06553-4
• No. of pages: 251
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; USA, French, LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / French, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Theatre Studies, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: plays & playwrights, Literary studies: plays and playwrights, LITERARY CRITICISM / Novel as Form