The Melodramatic Imagination

Download or read book The Melodramatic Imagination written by Peter Brooks and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Watching Dallas written by Ien Ang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dallas, one of the great internationally-screened soap operas, offers us first and foremost entertainment. But what is it about Dallas that makes that entertainment so successful, and how exactly is its entertainment constructed?

Download or read book Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination written by Geoff Mayer and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-12-22 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Melodrama is the foundation of American cinema. It is, however, a poorly understood term. While it is a pervasive and persuasive dramatic mode, it is not tied to any specific moral or ideological system. It is not a singular genre; rather, it operates as a "genre generating machine" capable of determining the aesthetics and structure of the drama within many genres. Melodrama centers the conflict around the clash between good and evil and provides a sense of poetic justice--but the specific values embedded in notions of good and evil are determined by the culture, and they shift from nation to nation, region to region, and period to period. This book explores the "populist" westerns of the 1930s, the propaganda films that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the popularity of Sax Rohmer's master villain Fu Manchu. "Melodramas of passion" and film noir also offer a challenge to melodrama with its seemingly alienated protagonists and downbeat endings. Yet, with few exceptions, Hollywood was able to assimilate these genres within its melodramatic imagination.

Download or read book Practices of the Sentimental Imagination written by Jonathan Zwicker and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The history of the book in nineteenth-century Japan follows an uneven course that resists the simple chronology often used to mark the divide between premodern and modern literary history. By examining the obscured histories of publication, circulation, and reception of widely consumed literary works from late Edo to the early Meiji period, Jonathan Zwicker traces a genealogy of the literary field across a long nineteenth century: one that stresses continuities between the generic conventions of early modern fiction and the modern novel. In the literature of sentiment Zwicker locates a tear-streaked lens through which to view literary practices and readerly expectations that evolved across the century. Practices of the Sentimental Imagination emphasizes both qualitative and quantitative aspects of literary production and consumption, balancing close readings of canonical and noncanonical texts, sophisticated applications of critical theory, and careful archival research into the holdings of nineteenth-century lending libraries and private collections. By exploring the relationships between and among Japanese literary works and texts from late imperial China, Europe, and America, Zwicker also situates the Japanese novel within a larger literary history of the novel across the global nineteenth century."

Download or read book The Melodramatic Imagination written by Peter Brooks and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Imitations of Life written by Marcia Landy and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On melodrama.

Download or read book A Country Excursion written by Guy de Maupassant and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This early work by Guy de Maupassant was originally published in the 1880's. Guy de Maupassant was born in 1850 at the Château de Miromesnil, near Dieppe, France. He came from a prosperous family, but when Maupassant was eleven, his mother risked social disgrace by trying to secure a legal separation from her husband. After the split, Maupassant lived with his mother till he was thirteen, and inherited her love of classical literature. In 1880, Maupassant published his first - and, according to many, his best - short story, entitled 'Boule de Suif' ('Ball of Fat'). It was an instant success. He went on to be extremely prolific during the 1880s, working methodically to produce up to four volumes of short fiction every year. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions.