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Modern Tragedy and the End of Worlds: Lillo, Leopardi, Ibsen

Modern Tragedy and the End of Worlds: Lillo, Leopardi, Ibsen

The emergence of a distinctly modern form of tragedy is often associated with the introduction of middle-class characters and settings to high drama during the early eighteenth century. What has not been explored previously, however, is how such tragedy uses modernity’s social circumstances to stage metaphysical conditions that are destructive to human worlds.

Leonardo F. Lisi pursues this argument by focusing on three central yet distinct figures in the history of modern thought and theater: eighteenth-century English dramatist George Lillo, early nineteenth-century Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, and late nineteenth-century Norwegian iconoclast Henrik Ibsen. Modern Tragedy and the End of Worlds: Lillo, Leopardi, Ibsen shows that their works share a critical theme: the impossibility of sustaining human forms of meaning in the face of modern materialism, finance, and reason.

Viewed in this light, Lisi argues that modern tragedy requires us to think together the incommensurable scales of human existence and the inhuman processes on which it rests—a task that continues to have profound relevance for imagining the end of worlds in the Anthropocene.

Praise:

“Lisi’s profound new work offers a provocative and philosophically ambitious account of what is at stake in modern tragedy, namely the experience of a radical loss of world. Modern Tragedy and the End of Worlds gives us a glimpse into the abyss of meaninglessness produced by the conditions of modernity and makes an impassioned case for how we can endure in the face of it.” —Vivasvan Soni, Northwestern University

“Lisi’s Modern Tragedy and the End of Worlds combines depth of learning, theoretical sophistication, and insightful textual analysis in a fashion that will be considered paradigmatic for studies in the history of dramatic form. The selection of authors and works is both surprising and compelling, and the encompassing story Lisi tells constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of modernity.” —David E. Wellbery, University of Chicago