I wanted to mention this play, The London Merchant, written by George Lillo in 1731, in light of the last discussion here. It's what my professor called a "New Tragedy," due to the fact that it is the tragedy of an apprentice and a harlot, not the high folk of tragedies past.
Robert Hume would say The London Merchant takes place in "Melodramaland," the play is filled with morals and christianity and mercy and grace, and characters like Thorowgood and Trueman. It takes itself clearly from the pages of Paradise Lost, Hamlet and Macbeth. It is a play that should be all those things FR laments in the previous conversation.
But it is absolutely brilliant. I had not read this play before yesterday, but I think this is the stuff that i stand on when i support the sentimental and the melodramatic.
4 comments:
I dont understand what I am lamenting. I hinted that out of the many established/unestablished kinds of sentimental, there is one kind that literature has and does avoid. And being that this certain kind of sentimenal is not defined in the dictionary we can only define it as cheap, easy, manipulitive. If literature suddenly includes any of these qualities, then yes i would have grounds for lamentations.
since its not in the dictionary it is cheap, easy, manipulative?
i don't think your lamenting. i am just pointing out, if not you, many others, often give things the short shrift due to emotion being used as a license in art.
chris- I have nothing against emotion being used as a license in art. If emotion wasn't used in art, art would be a dead thing, hardly cathartic.
Do you think sentimentality is synonomous with emotion? I believed sentimentality to be emotional idealism. There is a difference.
yes there is a difference.
no it is not as great as we would have ourselves believe.
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