The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of ExcessIn 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. |
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on aesthetics of muteness...
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Bibliographic information
| Title | The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess |
| Author | Peter Brooks |
| Edition | unabridged |
| Publisher | Yale University Press, 1995 |
| ISBN | 0300065531, 9780300065534 |
| Length | 235 pages |
| Subjects | › Psychology / Creative Ability |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |