Melodramatic Imperial Writing

From the Sepoy Rebellion to Cecil Rhodes

Neil Hultgren (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

256 Seiten

2023
Ohio University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8214-2605-0 (ISBN)

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Melodrama is often seen as a blunt aesthetic tool tainted by its reliance on improbable situations, moral binaries, and overwhelming emotion, features that made it a likely ingredient of British imperial propaganda during the late nineteenth century. Yet, through its impact on many late-Victorian genres outside of the theater, melodrama developed a complicated relationship with British imperial discourse.

Melodramatic Imperial Writing positions melodrama as a vital aspect of works that underscored the contradictions and injustices of British imperialism. Beyond proving useful for authors constructing imperialist fantasies or supporting unjust policies, the melodramatic mode enabled writers to upset narratives of British imperial destiny and racial superiority.

Neil Hultgren explores a range of texts, from Dickens’s writing about the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion to W. E. Henley’s imperialist poetry and Olive Schreiner’s experimental fiction, in order to trace a new and complex history of British imperialism and the melodramatic mode in late-Victorian writing.

Neil Hultgren is an associate professor of English at California State University, Long Beach, where he teaches courses in British literature and Victorian studies. He has written on Wilkie Collins, H. Rider Haggard, and Oscar Wilde, and his articles have appeared in such venues as Literature Compass and Victorians Institute Journal.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Melodrama as Plot

One: Imperial Melodrama after the Sepoy Rebellion
Two: Romance; or, Melodrama and the Adventure of History

Part Two: Melodrama as Aestheticized Feeling

Three: Imperialist Poetry, Aestheticism, and Melodrama’s Man of Action
Four: Stevenson’s Melodramatic Anthropology

Part Three: Melodrama as Distant Homeland

Five: Olive Schreiner and the Melodrama of the Karoo
Conclusion: Pirates and Spies

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	05.09.2023
Reihe/Serie	Series in Victorian Studies
Verlagsort	Athens
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	0-8214-2605-2 / 0821426052
ISBN-13	978-0-8214-2605-0 / 9780821426050
Zustand	Neuware