The melodramatic imagination : Balzac, Henry James, melodrama, and the mode of excess : with a new preface / Peter Brooks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brooks, Peter, 1938-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

James, Henry, 1843-1916.

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850.

Melodrama.

Criticism and interpretation.

Romanticism.

Fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

Fiction.

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850--Criticism and interpretation.

Balzac, Honoré de.

James, Henry, 1843-1916--Criticism and interpretation.

James, Henry.

Genre:

Melodrama.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xx, 235 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [1995]

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Originally published: 1976.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0300065531

OCLC:

34125703