The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of ExcessYale University Press, 1995 M01 1 - 235 pages 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. |
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abyss action aesthetic appears articulation Balzac and James Balzacian become characters Coelina Comédie conflict confrontation consciousness context critical Densher Diderot Don Ruy drama dramaturgy drame effect Eloi emotional ethical evil expression expressionism expressionistic Facino Cane father fiction figure final forces Frédérick Lemaître genre gesture Goriot Gothic Gothic novel grandiose heightened Henry James Hernani heroic hidden horror hyperbolic Illusions perdues imagination imperatives innocence James's Jamesian Kate language Latude Le Père Goriot live Lucien Lucien de Rubempré Lucrèce Borgia manichaeism manners Marie Dorval meaning melo melodra melodrama mélodrame metaphor Milly Milly's moral occult narrator novel novelistic occult pantomime Paris Pixerécourt play plot polarized postulated primal Princess Casamassima Rastignac reality realm recognition recognize reference relation relationship represented Restaud rhetoric role Romantic Sacred scene sense significant signs social society stage structure struggle suggests surface tableau theatre theatrical tion tragedy true Vautrin vehicle villain virtue vision word