A Cultural History of Tragedy in the Age of Empire

by Michael Gamer (Editor), Diego Saglia (Editor), Rebecca Bushnell (Editor)

Overview

This volume traces a path across the metamorphoses of tragedy and the tragic in Western cultures during the bourgeois age of nations, revolutions, and empires, roughly delimited by the French Revolution and the First World War. Its starting point is the recognition that tragedy did not die with Romanticism, as George Steiner famously argued over half a century ago, but rather mutated and dispersed, converging into a variety of unstable, productive forms both on the stage and off. In turn, the tragic as a concept and mode transformed itself under the pressure of multiple social, historical and political-ideological phenomena. This volume therefore deploys a narrative centred on hybridization extending across media, genres, demographics, faiths both religious and secular, and national boundaries. The essays also tell a story of how tragedy and the tragic offered multiple means of capturing the increasingly fragmented perception of reality and history that emerged in the 19th century.

Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350155060
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	05/20/2021
Series:	The Cultural Histories Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Michael Gamer is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Diego Saglia is Professor of English Literature at the University of Parma, Italy.
Michael Gamer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is author of Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation (2000). He is Associate Editor of the journal EIR: Essays in Romanticism and editor of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto (2002) and Charlotte Smith's Manon L'Escaut and the Romance of Real Life (2005). He has co-edited The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Drama (edited with Jeffrey Cox, 2003) and Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800 (with Dahlia Porter, 2008).
Diego Saglia is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Parma, Italy. He is the author of Poetic Castles in Spain: British Romanticism and Figurations of Iberia (2000) and has edited a special issue on 'Romanticism and Cultural Geography' for the European Journal of English Studies (2002), and co-edited British Romanticism and Italian Literature: Translating, Reviewing, Rewriting (with Laura Bandiera, 2005).
Rebecca Bushnell is School of Arts and Sciences Board of Advisors Emerita Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Her books include Prophesying Tragedy: Sign and Voice in Sophocles' Theban Plays (1988); Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (1990); A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice (1996); Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens (2003); A Companion to Tragedy ( 2005); and Tragedy: A Short Introduction (2007). She is Immediate Past President of the Shakespeare Association of America,

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Series Preface

Introduction: The Nineteenth Century: 'Tragedy in the World,' Michael Gamer (University of Pennsylvania, USA) and Diego Saglia (University of Parma, Italy)
1. Forms and Media, Lissette Lopez Szwydky (University of Arkansas, USA)
2. Sites of Performance and Circulation, Katherine Newey (University of Exeter, UK)
3. Communities of Production and Consumption, Sharon Aronofsky Weltman (Louisiana State University, USA)
4. Philosophy and Social Theory, Jonathan Sachs (Concordia University, Canada)
5. Religion, Ritual, and Myth, Jeffrey Cox (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
6. Politics of City and Nation, Michael Meeuwis (University of Warwick, UK)
7. Society and Family, Dana Van Kooy (Michigan Technological University, USA)
8. Gender and Sexuality, Cole Heinowitz (Bard College, USA)

Notes
Bibliography
Index