< Back to Events

Lunchtime seminar: Eric Parisot ‘Laughing at John Damer: The Reformative Ethics of George Colman’s The Suicide, A Comedy (1778)’

Thursday 1st December, 2016

1pm, Room 2.17, Arts Two.

QMCECS Lunchtime Seminar
in association with the Centre for the History of the Emotions

Thursday 1 December, 1-2pm:

Eric Parisot (Flinders University, Australia), ‘Laughing at John Damer: The Reformative Ethics of George Colman’s The Suicide, A Comedy (1778)’

When the Hon. John Damer—the profligate son of Lord Milton and husband to prominent socialite and sculptor Anne Damer— took his life in 1776, it sparked a number of responses in the correspondence of the bon ton, satirical poetry, fiction and drama. Horace Walpole gave a rather nonchalant description of events, replete with playful classical monikers, concluding with one of his favourite aphorisms: “this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel”. In contrast, George Colman decided to test the ethics of laughing at suicide in his sentimental comedy, The Suicide (1778). Labelled “a very dangerous subject” by David Garrick, this domestic comedy raises matters of class, social obligation, and their relation to genuine nobility in tracing the self-destructive foibles of young Tobine. The paper reflects on why people might have found it appropriate to laugh about suicide in the late eighteenth century, what ethical concerns were raised by laughing at other people’s self-destruction, and indeed, why we no longer deem the topic of suicide as appropriate laughing matter.

Venue: Arts Two in room 2.17

All welcome: lunch will be provided