Dion Boucicault, The Octoroon

Verna Ann Foster (Loyola University of Chicago)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Grace Moore (University of Otago)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1859

Places

United States (Country of Origin; Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

Dion Boucicault (1820-1890) was the most popular and skilled writer of melodrama in the nineteenth-century theatre of England, America, and his native Ireland. Boucicault’s best-known plays today are his comedy London Assurance, his Irish melodramas The Colleen Bawn and The Shaughraun, and his American melodrama The Octoroon. Melodrama developed out of bourgeois tragedy, sentimental drama, and romance in the early nineteenth century in England, France, and Germany. The genre is characterized by sensational plots, stereotypical virtuous and wicked characters, elaborate painted sets, and an emotional mix of thrills, pathos, and humor created by spectacle, tableaux, mood music, expressive acting, …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2339 words

Citation: Foster, Verna Ann. "The Octoroon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 July 2019 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38877, accessed 18 April 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article