Tragedy in the Enlightenment


Location: ASECS 2019, Grand Hyatt Hotel, Denver

I organized and chaired this roundtable session, which was built around the following five questions, each addressed to one of the speakers. For more information on my rationale, see here.

 ‘”With madness, as with vomit, it’s the passerby who receives the inconvenience.”  Granting Orton’s premise, how did actors and singers on the Enlightened stage make the protagonist’s madness tragic?’

Joseph Roach, Yale Universityš›

‘How did Enlightenment thinkers view the difference between ancient and modern tragedy?’

Larry Norman, University of Chicagoš›

 ‘How did discussions of the emotions that were thought to operate in tragic drama change during the eighteenth century?’

Logan Connors, University of Miamiš›

 ‘Why would one look to opera to revitalize or renew tragedy in the eighteenth century?’

Downing Thomas, University of Iowaš›

 ‘How does the Haitian Revolution contribute to a transatlantic approach to tragedy?’

Kieran Marcellin Murphy, University of Colorado Boulder