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 22
... idea of America that is homogeneous and more stable than the multicultural dialectic that I perceive in my own time ... idea of America has changed , and to what extent the idea has survived from age to age . 2 Metamora ( 1829 ) and the ...
... idea of America that is homogeneous and more stable than the multicultural dialectic that I perceive in my own time ... idea of America has changed , and to what extent the idea has survived from age to age . 2 Metamora ( 1829 ) and the ...
Page 188
... idea . The process of any discourse is largely an interplay of conventions . By " con- vention , ” I mean an idea on whose nature and significance certain people have agreed , either by deliberation or by custom , and according to which ...
... idea . The process of any discourse is largely an interplay of conventions . By " con- vention , ” I mean an idea on whose nature and significance certain people have agreed , either by deliberation or by custom , and according to which ...
Page 193
... idea of America , and . . . that idea , as it was made the exclusive property of the United States , is . . . trans- parently ideological . What could be a clearer demonstration of ideas in the service of power than the system of ...
... idea of America , and . . . that idea , as it was made the exclusive property of the United States , is . . . trans- parently ideological . What could be a clearer demonstration of ideas in the service of power than the system of ...
Contents
Constructing American Ideology | 1 |
Metamora 1829 and the Indian Question | 23 |
The Drunkard 1844 and the Temperance Movement | 61 |
Copyright | |
7 other sections not shown
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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