A Raucous Entertainment: Melodrama, Race, and the Search for Moral Legibility in Nineteenth-Century America

<p>Gathering together episodes from American theater history, my dissertation focuses on the destabilizing identities and paradoxical resolutions of so-called "Indian" and slavery plays to address nineteenth-century melodrama's fundamental engagement with race. Melodrama is a spectacular form that uses iconic images to move audiences to feel powerful emotions and to assign moral legibility to societal problems. Given the significant role of territorial expansion and chattel slavery in US history, race has always presented Americans with crucial moral dilemmas. Melodrama has long provided a dominant mode of representation for addressing such dilemmas that hinges upon racially inflected conceptions of good and evil. Yet melodrama's search for moral legibility depends upon contentious performance rituals that make this search far more complex than it is generally conceived to be. I argue that its paradoxical resolutions provide a ritualized framework for the staging of contested identities and ideologies during the period of America's national formation. My view of melodrama accounts for the interactive and raucous nature of nineteenth-century performance culture. It also incorporates the contributions of Native Americans and African Americans, which deserve more attention in studies of antebellum melodrama. I argue that melodrama has its origins in a colonial history - fraught with genocidal wars against indigenous peoples and the theft of African persons for slave labor - that shapes America's socio-political structures throughout much of the nineteenth century. My account of melodrama's rise throws into sharp relief how central the moral dilemmas posed by racial conflict have been to this influential American form since its beginnings. Placing Indian and slavery plays alongside one another, including <em>Metamora</em> (1829), <em>Nick of the Woods</em> (1838),<em> The Forest Princess</em> (1848),<em> The Escape</em> (1858), <em>The Stars and Stripes</em> (1848), and <em>The Octoroon</em> (1859), I emphasize the important points of connection between their representations of racialized victimization and vilification. Melodrama still influences the way we think and talk about race in America, and a look at our contemporary cultural moment shows that melodrama's paradoxical search for moral legibility continues to unfold.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Year dc:date.available

2017

Author dc:creator

• Olivier, Sarah M.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Clark Davis, Ph.D.
• Jan Gorak
• Tayana Hardin
• Diane Waldman

• Melodrama
• Race
• Moral legibility
• Nineteenth century America
• American Studies
• English Language and Literature
• Theatre and Performance Studies

Statement dc:rights

• <p>Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.</p>

Language dc:language

en

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1271

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.du.edu:etd-2271