Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures

Film and Culture Series

by Christine Gledhill (editor), Linda Williams (Editor)

For too long melodrama has been associated with outdated and morally simplistic stereotypes of the Victorian stage; for too long film studies has construed it as a singular domestic genre of familial and emotional crises, either subversively excessive or narrowly focused on the dilemmas of women. Drawing on new scholarship in transnational theatrical, film, and cultural histories, this collection demonstrates that melodrama is a transgeneric mode that has long spoken to fundamental aspects of modern life and feeling.Pointing to melodrama’s roots in the ancient Greek combination of melos and drama, and to medieval Christian iconography focused on the pathos of Christ as suffering human body, the volume highlights the importance to modernity of melodrama as a mode of emotional dramaturgy, the social and aesthetic conditions for which emerged long before the French Revolution. Contributors articulate new ways of thinking about melodrama that underscore its pervasiveness across national cultures and in a variety of genres. They examine how melodrama has traveled to and been transformed in India, China, Japan, and South America, whether through colonial circuits or later, globalization; how melodrama mixes with other modes such as romance, comedy, and realism; and finally how melodrama has modernized the dramatic functions of gender, class, and race by orchestrating vital aesthetic and emotional experiences for diverse audiences.

442 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 8, 2018

Reviews

[Hernando Saieh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used this book as my main source for my academic thesis, where I wrote a feature film screenplay with melodrama as its backbone. I did quite a bit of research on the subject, so I can confidently say you will be hard pressed to find a book as extensive, profound and relevant to melodrama as this one is.