Antonio Patraş, Eugen Lovinescu. Pentru reabilitarea modelului melodramatic în literatura modernă (I)
E. Lovinescu. The retrieval of the melodramatic model in modern literature (I)
Always focused on the dialogue between pleasure and ideology, with an echo in the present reality, melodrama played the part of an open aesthetical form, encouraging the public to acknowledge and self-perceive its identity with a sort of enthusiasm which foregoes the mass culture phenomenon. Contrary to the views expressed by Lovinescu and other theorists which assert the eternity of melodramatic structures (Eric Bentley, among others), Peter Brooks harbours the melodramatic category to the strict boundaries of modern culture – and, particularly, to the purist aesthetics of modernity – by neglecting its socio-cultural side. Aesthetically speaking, the outstanding originality of melodrama does not lie in the psychological insight on fictional characters which are now moulded according to an “existential” way of being. It is the intrigue the element which keeps a tensioned atmosphere of suspense and, more precisely, the explicit scenic disposition which astonishes the public by displaying pompous paraphernalia and theatrical effects and draws the spectator to recognize the eternal pattern of good-evil fight. After its stage settings and awesome effects, melodrama actually comes nearer to the experimental genres. It releases the strong feeling that, bearing the ability to reshape itself on various contexts and conditions, melodrama resembles very much to the model of avant-garde literature. Lovinescu’s point in pinning up the actuality of melodrama is nevertheless meritorious as, engrained by melodramatic techniques, his novels break open the ways to other perspectives on modernism.
Keywords: melodrama, melodramatic, mass-culture, lyricism, suggestion, musicality, psychologism, expressionism
- I.
- Lovinescu, Opere (Works), edited by Maria Simionescu and Alexandru George, Bucharest: “Minerva” Publishing House, 1982-1992
- ***, Scrieri (Writings), edited by Eugen Simion, Bucharest: “Minerva” Publishing House, 1969-1982
- II.
- Ien Ang, Watching Dallas. Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination, London and New York: Routledge, 1996
- Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama & the Mode of Excess, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1976
- Paul Cernat, Modernismul retro în romanul românesc interbelic (Vintage Modernism in the Romanian Inter-bellum Novel), Bucharest: “ART” Publishing House, 2009
- Imitations of Life. Two Centuries of Melodrama in Rusia, edited by Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger; London & Durham: Duke University Press, 2002
- André Jolles, Formes simples (Simple Figures), translated by Antoine Marie Buguet, Paris: Seuil, 1972
- Georg Lukács, Teoria romanului (The Theory of the Novel), translated by Viorica Nişcov, Bucharest: “Univers” Publishing House, 1977
- Melodrama. The Cultural Emergence of a Genre, Edited by Michael Hayes and Anastasia Nikolopoulou, London: McMillan Press, 1996
- Angelo Mitchievici, Decadenţă şi decadentism în contextul modernităţii româneşti şi europene (Decadence and Decadentism in Romanian and European Modernity), Bucharest: “Curtea Veche” Publishing House, 2011
- Virgil Nemoianu, Îmblânzirea romantismului (The Taming of Romanticism), translated by Alina Florea şi Sanda Aronescu, Bucharest: “Minerva” Publishing House, 1998
- Mario Praz, La crisi dell’eroe nel romanzo vittoriano (The Crisis of the Hero in the Victorian Novel), Firenze: N. C. Sansoni, Editore, 1952
- Frank Rahill, The World of Melodrama, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1967
- Marthe Robert, Romanul începuturilor şi începuturile romanului (The Origins of the Novel), translated by Paula Voicu-Dohotaru, Bucharest: “Univers” Publishing House, 1983
