A Cultural History of Tragedy in the Age of Empire

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

• Authors: Rebecca Bushnell, Michael Gamer, Diego Saglia
• Assisted by: Michael Gamer (Editor), Diego Saglia (Editor), Rebecca Bushnell (Editor of the series)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 21.09.2023
• EAN: 9781350416802
• ISBN: 978-1-350-41680-2
• No. of pages: 216
• Dimensions: 168 mm x 242 mm x 14 mm
• Series: The Cultural Histories Series
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, Europe, European History, DRAMA / General, HISTORY / Europe / General, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / General, c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, Theatre Studies, Social and cultural history, c 1910 to c 1919, c 1914 to c 1918 (including WW1), Plays, Playscripts, C 1900 - C 1914, c 1900 to c 1909, Tragic plays