This pathbreaking work analyses melodrama as a behavioural paradigm of the nineteenth century, manifest in the theatre, in literature, and in society. With its familial narratives, depictions of bodily torture, scenes of criminal conduct, expressions of highly charged emotion, and simple themes of good and evil, the melodramatic mode reaffirmed the familial, hierarchical, and public grounds for ethical behaviour and identity that characterized eighteenth-century models of social exchange and organization. In these enactments, Radicals and Tories, paupers and newsmen, ladies and prostitutes, and men of letters responded to the effects of a consolidating market culture, especially the emergence of bureaucratic procedures of rationalization, classification, and professionalization.
- ISBN10 0804731608
- ISBN13 9780804731607
- Publish Date 21 May 1998 (first published 1 October 1995)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Stanford University Press
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 318
- Language English