Date of Award

9-13-2023

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

English and American Literature

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Type

Dissertation

Abstract

Sweeter Goosebumps offers the first scholarly history of melodrama’s treatment of romantic love and contends that contextualizing contemporary romance texts within melodramatic history can help us understand some of the most puzzling aspects of the romance genre. More specifically, a close examination of melodramatic history begins to explain how and why the romance genre attracts so many fervent female fans despite its privileging of several conventions that curtail the agency of its female characters, such as the marriage plot and romanticized gender violence. Chapter One tells of how melodrama became invested in romantic love under a medievalist revival, Romanticism’s influence, the advent of the love marriage, and the rise of the female consumer among other historical trends in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chapter Two compares the cyclical chronology of a typical melodrama—which focuses on restoring some lost, idyllic past—with the linear chronology of the marriage plot from stage adaptations of Guy Mannering to How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Chapter Three examines how melodrama’s emotional structure, which swings wildly between scenes of tenderness and terror, became an ideal receptacle for romanticized intimate partner violence, as seen in contemporary melodramatic romances like Twilight and, later, Fifty Shades of Grey. Chapter Four examines the influence of the MeToo movement on melodramatic romance, and, in particular, the genre’s treatment of intimate partner violence, through Netflix’s You and Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us.

Language

English (en)

Chair and Committee

Julia Walker

Download

Available for download on Thursday, August 17, 2028

Share

COinS