Title: Rewriting melodrama : the hidden paradigm in modern Spanish theater /
Authors: Ríos-Font, Wadda C., 1964-
Publisher: Bucknell University Press ; Associated University Presses,
Year: 1997
Subjects: Melodrama, Spanish History and criticism.; Spanish drama History and criticism.
Abstract: This is the first critical study to assemble a corpus of Spanish melodrama, sketch a precise definition of the term through a reading of these works, and perform a comprehensive study of the genre's local history. It chronicles how, through the work of Jose Echegaray, the most famous playwright of the late nineteenth century, melodrama (until then a mass-culture product) infiltrates "serious" theater and becomes the dominant model of all dramatic creation. Aesthetically, Echegaray's plays claim a kinship with prestigious theatrical forms like Golden Age theater and tragedy; ideologically they purport to defend revolutionary tenets like nascent feminism while reaffirming in fact a traditional, bipolar, and conservative worldview.