Melodramatic tactics
Subtitle: theatricalized dissent in the English marketplace, 1800-1885
By: Elaine Hadley.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 303
Subjects: English drama -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Melodrama, English -- History and criticism; English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Literature and society -- England -- History -- 19th century; Theater and society -- England -- History -- 19th century; Social problems in literature; Dissenters in literature
Description: 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.

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 behavior 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [275]-295) and index.