Ebook: A Cultural History of Tragedy in the Age of Enlightenment Volume 4

The period covered by this volume in the Cultural History of Tragedy series is bookended by two shockingly similar historical events: the beheading of a king, Charles 1 of England in 1649 and Louis xiv of France in 1793. The period between these two dates saw enormous political, social and economic changes that altered European society’s cultural life. Tragedy which had dominated the European stage at the beginning of this period gradually saw itself replaced by new literary forms. culminating in the gradual decline of theatrical tragedy from the heights it had reached in the 1660’s. The dominance of France’s military and cultural prestige during this period is reflected in the important, almost, exclusive space dedicated in this volume to the French stage. The tragedies of France’s two greatest playwrights—Pierre Corneille (1606-84) and Jean Racine (1639-99) would dominate not only the French stage but through translations and adaptations became the model of tragic theater across Europe, finding imitators in England (Dryden), Italy (Alfieri) and as far afield as Russia. This dominance continued well into the eighteenth-century with the triumph of Voltaire’s tragedies. Nevertheless the writings of Diderot and Lessing changed the direction of theatre and after the Revolution. In the writings of Goethe, Shiller, Hegel, tragedy and the tragic will be reimagined and become the sign of European modernity.
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.