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Bourgeois tragedy
(1,025 words)

Apart from the sentimental epistolary novel, there is probably no other genre that is so revealing of the literary realignments and transformational processes of cultural history that were underway around 1750 as the bourgeois tragedy. It appeared in the context of sea changes in the history of genre, style, theater, and culture that defined drama and theater from the mid-18th century. With the fall of the Ständeklausel, the norms of literary style and genre that were associated with it dissolved too. The obsolete law of genre that required tragedy to address the misfortunes of pri…

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Dane, Gesa, “Bourgeois tragedy”, in: Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, Editors of the English edition: Graeme Dunphy, Andrew Gow. Original German Edition: Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit. Im Auftrag des Kulturwissenschaftlichen Instituts (Essen) und in Verbindung mit den Fachherausgebern herausgegeben von Friedrich Jaeger. Copyright © J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH 2005–2012. Consulted online on 19 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2352-0272_emho_SIM_017915>
First published online: 2015
First print edition: 20160907



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