A Cultural History of Tragedy in the Age of Empire

Description

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 centered 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. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS viii SERIES PREFACE xi Introduction: The Nineteenth Century: “Tragedy in the World” / Michael Gamer and Diego Saglia 1 1. Forms and Media / Lissette Lopez Szwydky 23 2. Sites of Performance and Circulation / Katherine Newey 45 3. Communities of Production and Consumption / Sharon Aronofsky Weltman 61 4. Philosophy and Social Theory / Jonathan Sachs 75 5. Religion, Ritual and Myth / Jeffrey N. Cox 91 6. Politics of City and Nation / Michael Meeuwis 105 7. Society and Family / Dana Van Kooy 121 8. Gender and Sexuality / Cole Heinowitz 139 NOTES 155 BIBLIOGRAPHY 179 INDEX 193