The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess

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.--book Jacket. 1. The Melodramatic Imagination -- 2. The Aesthetics Of Astonishment -- 3. The Text Of Muteness -- 4. Melodrama And Romantic Dramatization -- 5. Balzac: Representation And Signification -- 6. Henry James And The Melodrama Of Consciousness -- Conclusion: Melodrama, A Central Poetry. Peter Brooks. Originally Published: 1976. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.