Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University College Dublin (Faculty of Arts; School of English and Drama), language: English, abstract: In the following essay I will examine the term melodrama and its features. Accompanying I will give an account of the melodramatic components of the 19th century novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Both, melodrama and Jane Eyre, had their biggest impetus in the 19th century, thus have specific elements in common. Although Jane Eyre is not a drama to be played on stage it still concludes several melodramatic attributes, which will be specified after analyzing the term melodrama. The term melo originates from the Greek word melos, meaning music, which together with the annex drama simply refers to a stage play accompanied with music. Jean Jacques Rousseau is said to have firstly used a method of linking words with music in Pygmalion of 1770. In early 19th century use, melodrama referred to a stage play with interspersing songs and actors supported by music. By the end of the century the term had almost exclusively narrowed down to a dramatic piece marked by sensations, appeals to the emotions and a happy ending. Nevertheless music remained and still remains a crucial element to emphasize and intensify characters and scenes presented on stage and nowadays particularly in films. This musical element can also be found in the novels primarily of the 19th century expressed in a specific literary style, Brooks describes as follows:

This book examines melodramatic impulses in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, as well as the series' film adaptations and fan-authored texts. Attention to conventions such as crying, victimization, and happy endings in the context of the Twilight-Jane Eyre relationship reveals melodrama as an empowering mode of communication for girls. Although melodrama has saturated popular culture since the nineteenth century, its expression in texts for, about, and by girls has been remarkably under theorized. By defining melodrama, however, through its Victorian lineages, Katie Kapurch recognizes melodrama's aesthetic form and rhetorical function in contemporary girl culture while also demonstrating its legacy since the nineteenth century. Informed by feminist theories of literature and film, Kapurch shows how melodrama is worthy of serious consideration since the mode critiques limiting social constructions of postfeminist girlhood and, at the same time, enhances intimacy between girls—both characters and readers.

A lively and accessible account of the most popular form of nineteenth-century English theatre, and its continuing influence today.

India is home to Bollywood - the largest film industry in the world. Movie theaters are said to be the "temples of modern India," with Bombay producing nearly 800 films per year that are viewed by roughly 11 million people per day. In Bollywood Cinema, Vijay Mishra argues that Indian film production and reception is shaped by the desire for national community and a pan-Indian popular culture. Seeking to understand Bollywood according to its own narrative and aesthetic principles and in relation to a global film industry, he views Indian cinema through the dual methodologies of postcolonial studies and film theory. Mishra discusses classics such as Mother India (1957) and Devdas (1935) and recent films including Ram Lakhan (1989) and Khalnayak (1993), linking their form and content to broader issues of national identity, epic tradition, popular culture, history, and the implications of diaspora.

In this lucid and fascinating book, Peter Brooks argues that melodrama is a crucial mode of expression in modern literature. After studying stage melodrama as a dominant popular form in the nineteenth century, he moves on to Balzac and Henry James to show how these "realist" novelists created fiction using the rhetoric and excess of melodrama - in particular its secularized conflicts of good and evil, salvation and damnation. The Melodramatic Imagination has become a classic work for understanding theater, fiction, and film.

This carefully crafted ebook: "Jane Eyre + Wuthering Heights (2 Unabridged Classics)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Charlotte Brontë's most beloved novel describes the passionate love between the courageous orphan Jane Eyre and the brilliant, brooding, and domineering Rochester. The loneliness and cruelty of Jane's childhood strengthens her natural independence and spirit, which prove invaluable when she takes a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall. But after she falls in love with her sardonic employer, her discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a heart-wrenching choice. Ever since its publication in 1847, Jane Eyre has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic. It lives as one of the great triumphs of storytelling and as a moving and unforgettable portrayal of a woman's quest for self-respect. Born into a poor family and raised by an oppressive aunt, young Jane Eyre becomes the governess at Thornfield Manor to escape the confines of her life. There her fiery independence clashes with the brooding and mysterious nature of her employer, Mr. Rochester. But what begins as outright loathing slowly evolves into a passionate romance. When a terrible secret from Rochester's past threatens to tear the two apart, Jane must make an impossible choice: Should she follow her heart or walk away and lose her love forever? Considered by many to be Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece, Jane Eyre chronicles the passionate love between the independent and strong-willed orphan Jane Eyre and the dark, impassioned Mr. Rochester. Having endured a lonely and cruel childhood, orphan Jane Eyre, who is reared in the home of her heartless aunt prior to attending a boarding school with an equally torturous regime, is strengthened by these experiences.