TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2022//
TI  - Pity the Fool: Satire, Sentiment, and Aristocratic Vice in George Colman's The Suicide
JO  - Eighteenth-century fiction
A1  - Parisot, E.
SP  - 393
EP  - 414
VL  - 34
IS  - 4
N2  - The Suicide, A Comedy (1778) by George Colman (the Elder) is a sophisticated comedic response to the scourge of fashionable suicide in late eighteenth-century Britain. Te play simultaneously operates on two comedic planes: (1) it aims the purgative power of contemptible and socially aversive satire at the bon-ton by insinuating the scandalous suicide of high-profile aristocrat John Damer (1744-76); and (2) the reformation of Tobine-the middle-class protagonist who aspires to fashionable self-destruction-invests in the socially rehabilitative and compassionate humour of sentimental comedy. Two comedic strategies are aimed at two different audiences, with both strategies working to reinforce middle-class values. Te result is a comedy that merges two kinds of laughter to form a benign affective antidote to interclass suicidal contagion. This comedic antidote functions as an early demonstration of the positive value of narratives that depict the overcoming of suicidal intent-or what modern sociologists call the Papageno effect. © 2022 University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0840-6286
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ECF.34.4.393
ID  - ref1
ER  -