Melodrama (literature)

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The Melodram is a form of lyric drama which for this genus typical musical component, however, occurs in the background here one by one. The emergence of the style known today in literature as melodrama can best be found in the French Enlightenment.

definition

Melodrama is made up of two Greek words: melos : 'song' / 'sound' and drama : 'action'. Melodrama is initially a form of lyrical drama , the lyrical has been an integral part of the drama since ancient times, which arose from choral singing and required the cooperation of the music. In literature, melodrama developed in the second half of the 18th century from the opera , the Singspiel and from lyrical cantatas and the oratorio . Over the years, however, the musical fades more and more into the background. While the first lyrical dramas in the 18th century were still religious tragedies, purely literary works and plays written for the theater are parted with at the latest after the heyday of lyrical drama in France in the late 18th century. However, the melos is also gradually disappearing in the theater plays , since the theater technology of this time was hardly able to enable musical interventions. In some later works, however, the authors consciously used this technique again, for example in Drachmann's play Vølund Smed . Lyrical dramas in general and melodrama in particular are characterized above all by the predominance of a lyrical mood over the often strongly receding dramatic events. Representations of exclusively inner soul developments, actions or passions are typical of literary melodrama. So the melodrama is an emotional or soul drama. "Lyrical dramas always arise in epochs of heightened sensitivity, in which the irrationalism of the cult of feeling breaks the classic drama forms." (Wodtke, 1965)

history

After the musical (stage) dramas of the 18th century, JJ Rousseau's Pygmalion marks both the climax and the turning point of the lyrical dramas. Rousseau was the first to separate language and music. Nevertheless, a large number of significant lyrical dramas followed before the mono, duo and melodramas fell into disrepair and were parodied several times at the beginning of the 19th century. In German Romanticism, melodrama cannot develop on the old foundations, but almost all works of this epoch have characteristics of lyrical drama. A shift in content towards dream, hunch and longing can be seen. In England and France, however, the lyrical drama remains alive, especially in the romantic melodrama, different authors are of great importance here, Byron and Victor Hugo are exemplary. The lyrical drama of modernity originated in the symbolism of the late 19th century. As a countermovement to naturalism , the content of the lyrical dramas of romanticism was used. The sadness and tragedy of the aesthetic person, the doubts about the sustainability of one's own existence and the awareness of transience and death, for example, determined Hugo von Hofmannsthal's small dramas .

The essence of melodrama

Basically, the melodrama is based on the struggle between good and bad. In the melodramatic world, evil has to be exposed as such and fought and, in the best case, ultimately also driven out. Both "good" and "bad" are always personalized in melodrama, so they are embodied by acting people. The social order, morals and ethics are the standards for distinguishing good from bad. The good, acting person soon recognizes himself as an actor on the stage of life; he recognizes that there are forces acting on him from outside that he cannot defeat. The melodrama then allows both possibilities: Either to fail because of this knowledge or to break with one's strength or to be able to defeat the sheer overwhelming evil, both of which, however, result in the triumph of virtue. The language in melodrama is always an exaggerated expression of simple everyday gestures. Relationships between simple actions and mostly utopian wishes are also established. "Always tell the truth ... I ask you to do so by these feet, which I warmed in my hands when you were still in the cradle." For example, Denis Diderot has a bed-tied father say to his son. (Diderot, 1968) Behind this lies the wish of the early melodramatic writers to make simple life interesting by exaggerating it. This is achieved by exerting pressure on the surface of this simple or seemingly ordered life through the "evil" mentioned at the beginning and also by radically ruling out a middle between good and evil. (Brooks, 1994)

The moral-occult

In his essay on melodrama, Brooks speaks of the moral and occult as the basic theme of melodrama.

In the course of the Enlightenment and the associated desacralization, especially the writers and playwrights lack the essential religious-moral point of reference on which most of the dramatic plays and works had oriented themselves up to this time and which they mostly used as a central instruction for their protagonists had. This loss was absorbed in society by an emerging awareness of rational actions, reason, ethics and morals. The new dramatic way of acting consisted in questioning the view and being of modern man, which was no longer given from outside (formerly: church) and also to show his desperation and hopelessness. The vague definition of morality and ethics made these two terms and the associated life constructs vulnerable; in melodrama this attack is always carried out by the villain. The aim of the melodrama must then be to repel the attack of the villain on "the good". Brooks describes this morality floating above everything else as the moral-occult , an intangible, spiritual force which, although not clearly recognizable and namable within reality, is nevertheless always effective. The good must not only make it its task to defend or restore this power, but also to make it visible, to grasp and articulate it.

literature

  • Brooks, Peter The melodramatic Imagination In: Cargnelli, Christian / Palm, Michael (ed.): And the sun rises again and again. Texts on the melodramatic in the film. Vienna, 1994. p. 35ff. ISBN 3-901196-03-X
  • Diderot, Denis: preface to the natural son. In: ders .: Aesthetic writings. Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main, 1968. pp. 159ff.
  • Wodtke, Friedrich Wilhelm: Lyrical drama. In: Merker, Paul / Stammler, Wolfgang (Hg.): Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte. Second volume L – O. Second edition ed. v. Kohlschmidt, Werner and Mohr, Wolfgang. Berlin, 1965. pp. 252ff.