Melodrama As Provocateur.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williams, Linda.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Williams, Linda, 1946-2025.

Melodrama--History and criticism.

Melodrama.

Emotions in literature.

Local Subjects:

Williams, Linda, 1946-2025.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (343 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2026.

Summary:

"Centering on a provocative posthumous essay by Linda Williams, "The Fortunes of Melodrama in France and America; or, Why Melodrama is Still Important," Melodrama as Provocateur presents new research and innovative thinking on the past, present, and future of melodrama. Williams' ground-breaking opening chapter argues that melodramatic modes of imagining shape French as much as American culture from the late eighteenth century to today. Responding to Williams's provocations, fourteen scholars in theatre and film history, literary and cultural studies, screen media and cultural politics analyze transnational and transmedial forms of melodrama, ranging across plays, films, memoirs, and TV series, to news media, documentaries, pop videos, and digital technologies. Such comparative histories across centuries, cultures, and media forms radically broaden our understandings of the aesthetics and politics of melodrama today, a project made ever more urgent by melodrama's increasingly powerful role in public discourse"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Provocations

The Fortunes of Melodrama in France and America; or, Why Melodrama Is Still Important / Linda Williams

Refiguring Melodrama's Histories as Transnational/Transmedial Form

On Shifting Ground: Melodrama's Transcultural, Transmedial, Transhistorical Genesis Matthew Buckley

Hollywood's Export to the World: Melodramas of Colonial Conquest / Jane Gaines

Feeling Our Way: Melodrama and Emotional Engagement / Deidre Pribram

Strip Thinking: Forms of Intermittent Pictorialization / Carolyn Williams

"And We Wept, Precious": Motion Capture and Melodrama / Carla Marcantonio

Melodrama's Fortunes in France and America: 18th to 21st Century

Seeking Sisterhood: French Melodrama, American Cinema, and the Case of Les deux orphelines / Victoria Duckett

Searching for Melodrama in French vs. American Cinema, 1908-1912 / Richard Abel

The Lost Word: Le Silence est d'or; or, French (Mis)Recognition of a Melodrame that Dares not Speak its Name / Charles-Antoine Courcoux

"Grab Em by the Pussy": Donald Trump and the MAGA Melodrama / Elisabeth R. Anker

Trans Melodramas / Laura Horak

Aesthetics and Politics of Emotion

Falling in Love and in Art: The Diva Documentary / Dolores McElroy

Melodrama as Default Mode of Popular Culture: P!nk's album Trustfall (2023) / Martin Shingler

Emotional Legibility: Modernity, Melodrama and Ambivalent Gender Justice in Bombay Cinema, 1930s 1950s / Ira Bhaskar

From My Sister's Bedside: Life and Death in the Shadow of Blossoms Shanghai.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

1-4780-6218-5

9781478062189

OCLC:

1579230415