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Melodrama and the Aesthetics of Emotion

Research & Scholarship: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

Melodrama has long been associated with emotion, frequently in a pejorative sense due to its apparent emotional excesses. Conversely, scholars have argued that the melodramatic mode expresses “forces, desires, fears which... operate in human life," for which we have “no other language” (Gledhill tool, 31,37). In this chapter I explore how emotionality serves melodrama as an alrernarive “language" precisely to express forces, desires, and fears that operate beyond cognitive or ideological explanation.

Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationMelodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures
EditorsChristine Gledhill, Linda Williams
PublisherColumbia University Press
ISBN (Print)9780231180665
StatePublished - Jan 1 2018

Keywords

  • melodrama
  • emotion
  • aesthetics

Disciplines

  • Communication
  • Film and Media Studies
  • Social and Behavioral Sciences

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