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Melodrama and Victorian Realist Fiction
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Valentine Cunningham
Published/Copyright:
July 17, 2014
Abstract
This essay discusses melodrama as a mode of urban Victorian reality. Realist novels by Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and George Eliot give much room to melodramatic moments in their emblematic plots and actions, Manichaean character depiction and theatrical description of spaces and places such as London streets, interiors of lodging houses, graveyards and underworlds, simply because Victorian reality being what it is means that to do realism is inevitably to do melodrama.
Published Online: 2014-7-17
Published in Print: 2014-7-1
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Melodrama and Narrative Fiction: Towards a Typology
- Melodrama and Victorian Realist Fiction
- Passionate Allegories: Staging Romance in Civil War Melodrama
- The Politics of Staging Emotions in Contemporary Bollywood Films: Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) and Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan (2010)
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- Militarism and Melodrama: The Cultural Work of Combat Death
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Melodrama and Narrative Fiction: Towards a Typology
- Melodrama and Victorian Realist Fiction
- Passionate Allegories: Staging Romance in Civil War Melodrama
- The Politics of Staging Emotions in Contemporary Bollywood Films: Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) and Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan (2010)
- Melodrama, Emotion, and Environmental Advocacy: A Cognitive Approach to Erin Brockovich
- Wasting God’s Gift? The Ruined City and the “Melodramatic Penis”
- An American Odyssey of Suffering: Aesthetic Strategies in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave
- Militarism and Melodrama: The Cultural Work of Combat Death
- Announcement and Call for Members – The Melodrama Research Consortium
- Dan Embree, Edward Donald Kennedy and Kathleen Daly (eds.). Short Scottish Prose Chronicles: La Vraie Cronicque d’Escoce, The Scottis Originale, The Chronicle of the Scots, The Ynglis Chronicle, Nomina Omnium Regum Scotorum, The Brevis Chronica, The St Andrews Chronicle
- Stefan Thim. Phrasal Verbs: The English Verb-Particle Construction and its History
- Christopher Upward and George Davidson. The History of English Spelling
- Frank Lorenz. Basics of Phonetics & English Phonology
- A. N. Doane (ed.). Genesis A: A New Edition, Revised
- Ulrike Schenk. Die mittelenglische Romanze zwischen Imitation und Innovation: Zur Dynamik einer Diskurstradition
- Ulrike Krischke. The Old English Complex Plant Names: A Linguistic Survey and a Catalogue
- Monika Fludernik (ed.). Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory: Perspectives on Literary Metaphor
- Leo Truchlar. Die Erfindung der Wirklichkeit: Vergleichende Lektüren
- Gabor Ittzés and Miklós Péti (eds.). Milton Through the Centuries
- Johannes Ungelenk. Narcissus and Echo: A Political Reading of George Eliot’s
- Benjamin Boysen. The Ethics of Love: An Essay on James Joyce
- Andrew Gibson. The Strong Spirit: History, Politics, and Aesthetics in the Writings of James Joyce 1898–1915
- David Kennedy. The Ekphrastic Encounter in Contemporary British Poetry and Elsewhere
- Karsten Fitz. The American Revolution Remembered, 1830s to 1850s: Competing Images and Conflicting Narratives
- Stefanie Mueller. The Presence of the Past in the Novels of Toni Morrison
- Volker Depkat and Meike Zwingenberger (eds.). Visual Cultures – Transatlantic Perspectives
- Books Received
