Elaine Hadley – författare

This pathbreaking work analyzes melodrama as not merely a theatrical genre but as a behavioral paradigm of the nineteenth century, manifest in the theater, in literature, and in society. It shows how the melodramatic mode reaffirmed the familial, hierarchical, and public grounds for ethical behavior and identity that characterized models of social exchange and organization.

Focusing on the transition from political economy to economics, this volume seeks to restore social content to economic abstractions through readings of nineteenth-century British and American literature.