Indiscretions of an Italian Lover: Montgomery Clift, Masculinity, and Melodrama

in The Italianist
by Sam Gaglio

Courtroom Melodrama: Dramatizing Characters and Audiences in A Tale of Two Cities

in Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature
by Brittany Reid

Abstract:In the preface to A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens recalls that he conceived of the idea for the novel while staging a scene from Collins’ play The Frozen Deep with his children. Building on this account of the story’s theatrical inspiration, public displays or acts of performance are prominently featured throughout the novel and punctuate moments of collective unrest, false behavior, or political corruption. From the showcasing of the guillotine executions to the characterization of crowds as active audiences, dramatic tropes, forms, and terms are frequently employed throughout the text. This article explores the theatrical imagery of A Tale of Two Cities as it communicates a political statement, contributes to the narrative as a whole, and engages with established dramatic traditions from the period, such as melodrama. To that end, it specifically considers the use of melodramatic conventions in the court scenes to demonstrate Dickens’s “politics of performance” in the novel.

Darkness in the spotlight: Binaries and brutality in Zhang Yimou’s ‘Shadow’

in Metro Magazine: Media and Education Magazine
by Debbie Zhou

Abstract: While Zhang Yimou’s latest Wuxia offering bears the hallmark action and melodrama elements of his earlier work, it stands apart in terms of visuals, featuring a subdued, largely monochromatic palette and unfurling, brushstroke-like compositions. With this calculated stylistic move, the Chinese director allows the violence, corruption and conflict at the core of his historical tale to starkly taint each frame

“Melodrama, Purimspiel, and Jewish Emancipation”

in Victorian Literature and Culture

by Sharon Aronofsky Weltman

Abstract

Long forgotten, Elizabeth Polack (fl. 1835–43) is the earliest known Jewish woman playwright in England. This essay argues that her first play, Esther, the Royal Jewess, or the Death of Haman! (1835), performed at a public playhouse in the Jewish working-class neighborhood of London’s East End, radically realigns diverse genres and populations in advocating both Jewish emancipation and a voice for women. By way of a very brief introduction, I first point out the applicability here of Judith Butler’s Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Butler explores how group protest, such as Tahir Square or Occupy Wall Street, serves as a kind of communal bodily signification. Of course, her point is not to address how people come together in a public theater, where the cast arrives daily for salaried jobs and the audience plunks down cold cash for a fun night out. Yet something else meaningful can occur in assembly within the theater. Theatrical performances can take on the discursive power of political assembly that Butler defines, signifying “in excess of what is said,” bringing actors and audience together with potentially political valence. Butler helps us understand the stakes of theatrical performance and public assembly and why it is important to examine Esther, the Royal Jewess beyond recovering a neglected author, though that too is part of my object.