Performing American Identity in Anti-Mormon Melodrama

In the late nineteenth century, melodramas were spectacular entertainment for Americans. They were also a key forum in which elements of American culture were represented, contested, and inverted. This book focuses on the Mormon villain in anti-Mormon melodramas and analyses what these melodramas reveal about American identity in the nineteenth century.

In the late nineteenth century, melodramas were spectacular entertainment for Americans. They were also a key forum in which elements of American culture were represented, contested, and inverted. This book focuses specifically on the construction of the Mormon villain as rapist, murderer, and Turk in anti-Mormon melodramas. These melodramas illustrated a particularly religious world-view that dominated American life and promoted the sexually conservative ideals of the cult of true womanhood. They also examined the limits of honorable violence, and suggested the whiteness of national ethnicity. In investigating the relationship between theatre, popular literature, political rhetoric, and religious fervor, Megan Sanborn Jones reveals how anti-Mormon melodramas created a space for audiences to imagine a unified American identity.

Get Performing American Identity in Anti-Mormon Melodrama by at the best price and quality guaranteed only at Werezi Africa's largest book ecommerce store. The book was published by Taylor & Francis Ltd and it has pages.