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

Michael Gamer is British Academy Global Professor of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London, UK, and 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.

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.