San Antonio College Library

Using the term "melodrama" as an abstract category to describe almost any literary mode - from nineteenth-century novels to twentieth-century films - modern critics have obscured the genre's historical and cultural functions as well as the nature of its specific appeal to working-class audiences. To rectify this situation, the essays in this volume redirect attention to the historical, social, and cultural milieu in which melodrama emerged. This collection...

Camille, a concert violinist, becomes intrigued by her lover's business partner, Stephane. She interprets his distance as a sign of intellectual seduction. The love triangle that develops reveals the complexity and imperfection of the three characters.

"This is the first major study of Dickens's villains. They embody, John argues, the crucial fusion between the 'deviant' and 'theatrical' aspects of his writing. Though there have been many studies of both the macabre and the dramatic Dickens, this book sets up a dialogue between these two main strands. John's wider reappraisal of Dickensian character stems from a belief that Post-Romantic criticism and theory has been permeated by an anti-theatrical...

A woman and her mother are sent to an island and spend almost 60 years trying to leave it. Follow three generations of the woman's family as they all try and find happiness on a lagoon surrounded by shifting dunes.

Chris Gardner is an intelligent, energetic guy who can't catch a break. In the sluggish Bay Area economy of 1981, he's losing ground, by investing all his family's money in high cost bone-density scanners. His wife leaves him, he loses his apartment, and with his 5-year-old son in tow joins the ranks of the homeless, if not the hopeless. Bounced from shelter to shelter, he finds himself a single dad who has to support and care for a young child. Impressing...

Fiona and Grant are an Ontario couple who have been married for over 40 years. During the twilight of their years, Grant is forced to face the fact that Fiona's "forgetfulness" actually is Alzheimer's. After Fiona wanders away and is found, the decision is made for her to go into a nursing home. For the first time in their relationship, they are forced to undergo a separation since the nursing home has a "no-visitors" policy for the first 30 days...