QMCECS Lunchtime Seminar
\nin association with the Centre for the History of the Emotions<\/p>\n
Thursday 1 December, 1-2pm:<\/p>\n
Eric Parisot (Flinders University, Australia), \u2018Laughing at John Damer: The Reformative Ethics of George Colman\u2019s The Suicide, A Comedy (1778)\u2019<\/p>\n
When the Hon. John Damer\u2014the profligate son of Lord Milton and husband to prominent socialite and sculptor Anne Damer\u2014 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: \u201cthis world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel\u201d. In contrast, George Colman decided to test the ethics of laughing at suicide in his sentimental comedy, The Suicide (1778). Labelled \u201ca very dangerous subject\u201d 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\u2019s self-destruction, and indeed, why we no longer deem the topic of suicide as appropriate laughing matter.<\/p>\n
Venue: Arts Two in room 2.17<\/p>\n
All welcome: lunch will be provided<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
QMCECS Lunchtime Seminar in association with the Centre for the History of the Emotions. Thursday 1 December, 1-2pm: Eric Parisot (Flinders University, Australia), \u2018Laughing at John Damer: The Reformative Ethics of George Colman\u2019s The Suicide, A Comedy (1778)\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-lunchtime-seminars"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1133,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions\/1133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}