Melodrama and the Myth of AmericaIn nineteenth-century America, popular theatre acted as the vehicle for the construction of a national ideology. Melodrama and the Myth of America looks at five popular plays 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. These plays present American history as a grand melodrama. |
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Page 170
... ( Union Sergeant 29 ) . A Confederate major tells a northern friend , " You have at last brought on the issue by the election of a sectional President , and if we submit to his diction we well [ sic ] be but the slaves of a political des ...
... ( Union Sergeant 29 ) . A Confederate major tells a northern friend , " You have at last brought on the issue by the election of a sectional President , and if we submit to his diction we well [ sic ] be but the slaves of a political des ...
Page 175
... Union sympathizer from the start , and so requires neither correction nor reformation ; when her Union suitor wonders whether she will accept the attentions of a federal officer , she sets him straight . Oh , we long for the halcyon ...
... Union sympathizer from the start , and so requires neither correction nor reformation ; when her Union suitor wonders whether she will accept the attentions of a federal officer , she sets him straight . Oh , we long for the halcyon ...
Page 185
... Union ; the plays force the South , as such , to the margin of American culture . By seceding , the South challenged the organicism of the Union and forced a recon- sideration of " American " by , in essence , competing for that title ...
... Union ; the plays force the South , as such , to the margin of American culture . By seceding , the South challenged the organicism of the Union and forced a recon- sideration of " American " by , in essence , competing for that title ...
Contents
Constructing American Ideology | 1 |
Metamora 1829 and the Indian Question | 23 |
The Drunkard 1844 and the Temperance Movement | 61 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
abolitionism abolitionist action actual Aiken American antebellum antislavery argued assures audience battle become California characters Christian civilization Clare colonial concept Confederate convention Cribbs culture death defined depicted discourse drama drinking drunkard Edward Edwin Forrest English evil experience fight flag Forrest George gold Howard idea ideology Indian Indian removal individual interaction Joe Saunders Kerchival King Philip's War land Legree Mary melodrama Metacomet Metamora miners moral myth Nahmeokee narrative nation natives New-York Evening Post nineteenth-century North northern novel offered performance play playwright political popular position present production race readers refer reform reinforce response rhetoric role romantic sachem savage scene Scraggs sentimental Sheridan slave system slavery social society South southern stage story Stowe Stowe's sympathy teetotalism temperance temperance movement theatre theatrical Topsy tradition Uncle Tom Uncle Tom's Cabin Union villain virtually virtue vision Wampanoag Washingtonian West woman writer York