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Melodrama and the Myth of America
Published by: Indiana University Press
5 illus.
- eBook
- 9780253113085
- Published: December 1993
$9.99
Other Retailers:
" . . . a fascinating study of American theatre and American society . . . " —Times Higher Education Supplement
" . . . an engaging and timely volume, capably researched and masterfully presented." —Theatre Studies
" . . . filled with interesting and suggestive insights." —American Literature
Mason shows how popular theater can act as the vehicle for constructing American ideology. He looks at five popular 19th-century melodramas that took as their subjects important issues in American life: Metamora and the "Indian" Question, The Drunkard and the temperance movement, Uncle Tom's Cabin and slavery, My Partner and the American West, and Shenandoah and the Civil War.
Preface
1. Constructing Americam Ideology
Ideology and Myth
The Sentimental Vision
Melodrama
America/America
2. Metamora (1829) and the "Indian" Question
King Philip's War
Savagism
The Romantic Warrior
Edwin Forrest, American
Metamora
Indian Removal
The Sachem's Audience
3. The Drunkard (1844) and the Temperance Movement
The Politics of Drinking in Antobellum America
The Temperance Message
The Temperance Narrative
The Drunkard
The Operations of Discourse
4. Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and the Politics of Race
The Slave System
Abolitionism and Racism
The Colonization Movement
The Good Samaritan
The Sentimental Argument
Racialism and Missis Harriet
Breakdown
The Safety of the Stage
5. My Partner (1879) and the West
The West
The Discourse of California
My Partner
The Pastoral Mines
The "Chinee"
Paradise Lost
6. Shenandoah (1889) and the Civil War
The Myth of the War
The Veterans' Myth on Stage
The Rationale of War
War as Romance
Shenandoah
Reconstruction on Stage
7. Staging the Myth of America
The Discourse and Conventions of America
America, the Sentimental
The American Space
American History as Melodrama
Notes
Bibliography
Index
JEFFREY D. MASON is Professor of Theatre and Chair of the Fine Arts Department at California State University, Bakersfield.