W cieniu gilotyny. O estetycznych, obyczajowych i społecznych uwarunkowaniach powstania melodramatu

The main goal of the article is to inscribe the formation, at the turn of the 18th century, of the melodrama in a broader context in order to show that the creation of this dramatic genre was not a result of one man’s talent or pure coincidence but actually a result of the historical process and numerous social and aesthetic tendencies that had been influencing the French theatre over previous decades. All these transformations that would eventually get compounded into melodrama, appearing throughout the century, have been observed and commented on, demonstrating once again that theatre is a never-ending story of making and becoming.