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The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information the cambridge companion to english melodrama This newly commissioned series of essays by leading scholars is the first volume to offer both an overview of the field and currently emerging critical views on the history, form, and influence of English melodrama. Authoritative voices provide an introduction to melodrama’s early formal features such as tableaux and music, and trace the development of the genre in the nineteenth century through the texts and performances of its various subgenres, the theatres within which the plays were performed, and the audiences who watched them. The historical contexts of melodrama are considered through essays on topics including con- temporary politics, class, gender, race, and empire. And the extensive influences of melodrama are demonstrated through a wide-ranging assessment of its ongoing and sometimes unexpected expressions – in psychoanalysis, in other art forms (the novel, film, television, musical theatre), and in popular culture generally – from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Carolyn Williams is Professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is the author of Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre, Parody (2010) and Transfigured World: Walter Pater’s Aesthetic Historicism (1989), and is the co-editor (with Laurel Brake and Lesley Higgins) of Walter Pater: Transparencies of Desire (2002). A complete list of books in the series is at the back of this book. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO ENGLISH MELODRAMA EDITED BY CAROLYN WILLIAMS Rutgers University © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107095939 doi: 10.1017/9781316155875 © Cambridge University Press 2018 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2018 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Williams, Carolyn, 1950– editor. title: The Cambridge companion to English melodrama / edited by Carolyn Williams. description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, ny : Cambridge University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references. identifiers: lccn 2018022346| isbn 9781107095939 (hardback) | isbn 9781107479593 (paperback) subjects: lcsh: Melodrama, English – History and criticism. classification: lcc pr635.m45 c36 2018 | ddc 822/.052709–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018022346 isbn 978-1-107-09593-9 Hardback isbn 978-1-107-47959-3 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information For Sally Ledger (1961–2009) © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information CONTENTS List of Illustrations page x List of Contributors xi Acknowledgements xvi A Note on Citations of Plays xvii Chronology xviii 1 Introduction 1 carolyn williams part i histories of english melodrama 2 Early English Melodrama 13 matthew buckley 3 Gothic Melodrama 31 michael gamer 4 Nautical Melodrama 47 ankhi mukherjee 5 Domestic Melodrama 61 christine gledhill 6 Theatres and Their Audiences 78 jim davis part ii melodramatic technique 7 Melodramatic Music 95 michael v. pisani vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information contents 8 Melodramatic Acting 112 george taylor 9 Stagecraft, Spectacle, and Sensation 126 hayley jayne bradley part iii melodrama and nineteenth-century english culture 10 Melodrama and Gender 149 katherine newey 11 Melodrama and Class 163 rohan mcwilliam 12 Melodrama and Empire 176 marty gould 13 Melodrama and Race 192 sarah meer part iv extensions of melodrama 14 Melodrama and the Realist Novel 209 carolyn williams 15 Melodrama in Early Film 224 david mayer 16 Moving Picture Melodrama 245 jane m. gaines 17 Melodrama and the Modern Musical 262 sharon aronofsky weltman 18 Psychoanalysis and Melodrama 277 peter brooks viii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information contents 19 Metamodern Melodrama and Contemporary Mass Culture 289 juliet john Guide to Further Reading 305 Index 316 ix © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information ILLUSTRATIONS 7.1 Anonymous music to The Idiot of Heidelberg page 97 7.2 Excerpt from a handwritten music plot to Lawrence Barrett’s touring production of The Serf 103 7.3 Transcription from the orchestra parts to A Man’s Shadow, ‘No. 2’, composer unknown 108 9.1 An illustration of the 1887 earthquake in Nice – moments before a tidal wave also struck the promenade 132 9.2 The publicity postcard for Dance’s touring production showing how the sensation scene sought to directly echo actual events 133 9.3 A ‘juggernaut’ out of control, veering off road during the Paris to Berlin race 139 9.4 A sensational plunge over the precipice 140 9.5 A typical illustration of a train collision – Wennington, near Lancaster, 1880 141 9.6 Collision at Hazlebury Junction – an illustration of the sensa- tion scene from Pluck 143 16.1 Frame enlargements. A Corner in Wheat 248 and 16.2 16.3 Frame enlargement. Uncle Tom’s Cabin 250 16.4 Location still. Way Down East 254 x © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-09593-9 — The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Edited by Carolyn Williams Frontmatter More Information CONTRIBUTORS Hayley Jayne Bradley lectures in Performance for Stage and Screen at Sheffield Hallam University. She has written on aspects of late nineteenth- and early twen- tieth-century popular British theatre, including collaborating dramatists and thea- trical adaptation. She is currently researching her first monograph, British and American Theatrical Artisans: The Professional Craft of the Late Nineteenth- Century Theatrical Entrepreneur. Peter Brooks is Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus at Yale University, where he was Founding Director of the Whitney Humanities Center, and is currently Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholar in the University Center for Human Values and the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is the author of several books, including The Melodramatic Imagination (1976), Reading for the Plot (1984), Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature (2000), Henry James Goes to Paris (2007), and the recently published Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris (2017). Matthew Buckley is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University (New Brunswick) and a scholar of comparative drama whose recent work has focused on the early development of stage melodrama and the extended, multimedial, transcultural history of melodrama as a form. He is the author of Tragedy Walks the Streets: The French Revolution in the Making of Modern Drama (2006), as well as articles in Modern Drama, Theatre Survey, Theatre
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