(Il)lisibilité du mélodrame américain au xixe siècle : The Gladiator (1831) de Robert Montgomery Bird et Jack Cade (1841) de Robert Conrad

Abstract

The melodramatic genre gestures towards the expression of a morally and emotionally legible world (Peter Brooks). Robert Montgomery Bird’s The Gladiator (1831) and Robert Conrad’s Jack Cade (1841)—two plays that were awarded the Edwin Forrest Prize—are no exception and champion a democratic and patriarchal ethos that echoes the political ideal fostered by Andrew Jackson. Yet the conflicting temporalities at work in both plays problematize the teleological impulse that informs their revisiting of European history and undermine the possibility to venture a coherent typological interpretation of them.

Keywords

• American melodrama
• nineteenth century
• Bird (Robert Montgomery)
• Gladiator (The)
• Conrad (Robert)
• Jack Cade