The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature; 1

The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature seeks to understand the ways in which literature has engaged deeply with the ever-evolving relationship humanity has with its ultimate demise. It is the most comprehensive collection in this growing field of study and includes essays by Brian McHale, Catherine Belling, Ronald Schleifer, Helen Swift, and Ira Nadel, as well as the work of a generation of younger scholars from around the globe, who bring valuable transnational insights. Encompassing a diverse range of mediums and genres – including biography and autobiography, documentary, drama, elegy, film, the novel and graphic novel, opera, picturebooks, poetry, television, and more – the contributors offer a dynamic mix of approaches that range from expansive perspectives on particular periods and genres to extended analyses of select case studies. Essays are included from every major Western period, including Classical, Middle Ages, Renaissance, and so on, right up to the contemporary. This collection provides a telling demonstration of the myriad ways that humanity has learned to live with the inevitability of death, where "live with" itself might mean any number of things: from consoling, to memorializing, to rationalizing, to fending off, to evading, and, perhaps most compellingly of all, to escaping. Engagingly written and drawing on examples from around the world, this volume is indispensable to both students and scholars working in the fields of medical humanities, thanatography (death studies), life writing, Victorian studies, modernist studies, narrative, contemporary fiction, popular culture, and more. The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature Cover -1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Contributors 14 Introduction 22 Notes 24 Works Cited 25 Part I. Traversing the Ontological Divide 26 Work Cited 28 1. The Final Frontier: Science Fictions of Death 30 Motivating the Motif 31 Methuselah's Children 32 Ghosts in Machines 33 How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe 34 The Walking Dead 36 The Last Man 37 Virtual Reality 38 Works Cited 39 2. "Still I Danced": Performing Death in Ford's The Broken Heart 41 Notes 48 Works Cited 48 3. Death and the Margins of Theater in Luigi Pirandello 50 Notes 61 Works Cited 61 4. Forbidden Mental Fruit? Dead Narrators and Characters from Medieval to Postmodernist Narratives 63 Introduction 63 Ontological Complications: Dead Character-Narratorsin Postmodernist Narratives 64 Anticipations of Postmodernism: Dead Characters from the Middle Ages to Science-Fiction Narratives 65 Concluding Remarks 69 Notes 71 Works Cited 72 5. Literature and the Afterlife 74 Space: "Radical Theming" 76 Time: "The Great Mother-Gift" 77 Voice: "The Result Was Cacophony" 78 Genre as Afterlife 81 Notes 81 Works Cited 82 6. The Novel as Heartbeat: The Dead Narrator in Mike McCormack's Solar Bones 83 Notes 90 Works Cited 91 7. Dead Man/and Woman Talking: Narratives from Beyond the Grave 92 Dispositions 93 Enunciations 95 Perspectives 96 Verisimilitude 98 Conclusion(s) 99 Notes 101 Works Cited 101 8. The View from Upstream: Authority and Projection in Fontenelle's Nouveaux dialogues des morts 104 Works Cited 111 Part II. Genres 112 Work Cited 113 9. Big Questions: Re-Visioning and Re-Scripting Death Narratives in Children's Literature 114 Cast of Animal Characters 115 Death of Pets and Elderly Family Members 116 Death of Parents 118 Children's Death and Grieving 119 What Is Death? 120 Notes 122 Works Cited 123 Primary Sources 123 Secondary Sources 124 10. In the U-Bend with Moaning Myrtle: Thinking about Death in YA Literature 126 Plotting Death 129 Individuation and Childhood's End 129 Awareness, Empathy, and Activism 132 Death and the Posthuman 134 Final Thoughts 135 Note 136 Works Cited 136 11. Death and Mourning in Graphic Narrative 138 Works Cited 142 12. Death and Documentaries: Heuristics for the Real in an Age of Simulation 144 Basics of Documentary 145 Distinguishing Reality from Irreality 146 Contemplating Responses to Mortality 147 Memento Mori, Memento Vivere 147 Analyzing Death in Documentaries 148 Notes 150 Works Cited 150 Primary Sources 150 Secondary Sources 151 13. Death and the Fanciulla 153 Notes 158 Works Cited 159 14. Death, Literary Form, and Affective Comprehension: Primary Emotions and the Neurological Basis of Genre 161 Genre as Etiquette, Language, and a Natural Fact 162 Genre as Etiquette 163 Narrative Genres as a Fact of Language 163 Genre as "Something like a Natural Organism" 164 The Affective Comprehension of Genre 165 Facing Death in Narrative Genres 168 Fearful Irony 168 Blunt Melodrama 170 Blank Tragedy 171 Conclusion: Death and Literary Genre 172 Notes 173 Works Cited 173 Part III. Site, Space, and Spatiality 176 Works Cited 178 15. Ecocide and the Anthropocene: Death and the Environment 180 Call of the Wild: Death, Mountain, and Forest Spirits in the Japanese Imagination 181 Connemara: Stories of Life and Death 183 The Indian Reservation: Narratives of Loss, Ecocide, and Genocide 185 Ecological Disasters and the Nuclear Apocalypse 188 Notes 190 Works Cited 190 16. A Disney Death: Coco, Black Panther, and the Limits of the Afterlife 192 Psychoanalysis, or, To Death and Beyond! 193 From Psychoanalysis to the Movies 194 What Is the Purpose of Your Visit? 196 Works Cited 200 17. Suicide in the Early Modern Elegiac Tradition 201 Notes 208 Works Cited 209 18. Institutions and Elegies: Viewing the Dead in W. B. Yeats and John Wieners 211 The Visual Space of Modern Elegy 212 Vitality through Death 215 "The Municipal Gallery Revisited" (1937) 215 The Hotel Wentley Poems (1958) 218 The Art of Cruising Art 219 "A Poem for Museum Goers" 221 Notes 224 Works Cited 225 19. Death "after Long Silence": Auditing Agamben's Metaphysics of Negativity in Yeats's Lyric 227 Note 236 Works Cited 236 20. The Spatialization of Death in the Novels of Virginia Woolf 237 Introduction 237 Epiphany as Dissolution: The Voyage Out and The Ship of Death 239 After Such Knowledge, What Consolation?: Order and the Limits of Vision in To the Lighthouse 242 Resting Securely in Impermanence: The Waves as Final Statement 244 Conclusion 247 Notes 247 Works Cited 247 21. "Memento Mori": Memory, Death, and Posterity in Singapore's Poetry 249 Modernization, Death, and Poetic Strategy 249 Grief and the Virtualization of Attachment 250 Edwin Thumboo and the Crafting of Posterity 252 Boey Kim Cheng and Elegiac Distance 254 Yeow Kai Chai and Teeming Presence 255 Works Cited 260 Part IV. Rituals, Memorials, and Epitaphs 262 Works Cited 264 22. Death and the Dead in Verse Funerary Epigrams of Ancient Greece 266 Notes 274 Works Cited 275 23. Fictional Will 278 A Matter of Life and Death: Writing on the Brink 279 Writing in Earnest: An Urgent Cause 281 Making Disposition: An Exercise of Will 282 Testis: A Need for Witness 284 Notes 285 Works Cited 285 Primary Sources 285 Secondary Sources 286 24. Monumentalism, Death, and Genre in Shakespeare 287 Notes 295 Works Cited 295 25. Death and Gothic Romanticism: Dilating in/upon the Graveyard, Meditating among the Tombs 297 Works Cited 307 26. Death, Literature, and the Victorian Era 309 The Cult of Mourning and the Commodification of Death 309 Materiality, Relics, and the Body 310 Sex and Death 312 Victorian Gothic 316 Last Words 317 Notes 317 Works Cited 317 27. The Aura of the Phonographic Relic: Hearing the Voices of the Dead 319 The Aura of the Recorded Voice 320 The Phonographic Recording and the Séance 323 The Phonograph Recording as Part of a Well-Managed Death 325 Note 327 Works Cited 327 28. Anecdotal Death: Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets 328 This Last Act 329 The Texture of a Discourse 330 Ridiculous Anecdotes 334 Notes 337 Works Cited 338 29. Biography: Life after Death 340 Notes 348 Works Cited 349 Part V. Living with Death: Writing, Mourning, and Consolation 352 Work Cited 353 30. "An immense expenditure of energy come to nothing": Philosophy, Literature, and Death in Peter Weiss's Abschied von den Eltern 354 Notes 362 Works Cited 362 31. Paradox, Death, and the Divine 363 Death and Agency 364 Death and Meaning 366 The Numinous Heart of Paradox 368 Notes 369 Works Cited 369 32. Inner Seeing and Death Anxiety in Aidan Higgins's Blind Man's Bluff and Other Life Writing 371 Introduction 371 Visual Images 374 Inner Vision and Familiar Forms 376 Conclusion 379 Works Cited 380 33. Autothanatography and Contemporary Poetry 382 Works Cited 391 34. When Time Stops: Death and Autobiography in Contemporary Personal Narratives 393 Note 402 Works Cited 403 35. "Grief made her insubstantial to herself": Illness, Aging, and Death in A. S. Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories 404 Introduction 404 Postmemory, Grief, and Death 405 Aging, Illness, and Death 407 Dementia Narratives and Grief before Death 410 Conclusion 412 Notes 413 Works Cited 413 PART VI. Historical Engagements 414 Works Cited 416 36. On the Corpse of a Loved One in the Era of Brain Death: Bioethics and Fictions 418 Two Kinds of Dead 419 Irreversibility 422 Fictions 424 Works Cited 426 37. Death to the Music of Time Reticence in Anthony Powell's Mediated Narratives of Death 427 Introduction: Narration by Proxy - Anthony Powell's Corpseless Danse Macabre 427 Dramatization, Suspense, and Tragic Irony 428 The Unnamable 430 Pilgrim's Progress 433 Conclusion: "Lack of Outward Display" or the Affecting Power of Narrative under Control 435 Notes 435 Works Cited 436 38. Death and Chinese War Television Dramas: (Re)configuring Ethical Judgments in The Disguiser 437 Contextual Frames 438 Of Mortal Economies and Ethical Hierarchies 440 Final Remarks 443 Notes 444 Works Cited 445 39. Where Do the Disappeared Go? Writing the Genocide in East Timor 446 Understanding the Santa Cruz Massacre in Dili 448 The Silence Surrounding the Event 449 Implications of Silence 451 Conclusion 452 Notes 453 Works Cited 454 40. "Doubtfull Drede" Dying at the End of the Middle Ages 455 Notes 461 Works Cited 462 41. Urbanization, Ambiguity, and Social Death in Charles Brockden Brown's Arthur Mervyn 463 Notes 468 Works Cited 469 42. Coda 471 Index 476 © 2021,Taylor & Francis Group Classical literature,Medieval Literature,Early Modern Litearture,Restoration,The Long 18th Century,Gothic Literature,Romanticism,Victorian Literature,Modern Literature,Contemporary Literature,Postmodern Literature,Poetry,Drama,Fiction,Auto/biography,autobiography,biography,Documentary,narrative,film,tv,television,sci fi,sci-fi,science fiction,war literature,children's literature,fairytales,folklore,mythology,sleep,metaphor,Holocaust,Holocaust Literature,genocide,metanarrative,death penalty,religion,faith,suicide,Euthanasia,the body,trauma,medical humanity,post-human,posthuman,post humanity,transition,gender,gender studies,gueer,queer theory,geopolitics,Thanatography,rhetoric,afterlife,ghosts,spirits,spirituality,haunting,digital humanities,postcolonial literature,colonial literature,monuments,art,painting,grief,mourning,Orpheus Traversing the ontological divide. The final frontier : science fictions of death / Brian McHale -- "Still I danced" : performing death in Ford's The broken heart / Donovan Sherman -- Death and the margins of theatre in Luigi Pirandello / Daniel Jernigan -- Forbidden mental fruit? Dead narrators and characters from medieval to postmodernist narratives / Jan Alber -- Literature and the afterlife / Alice Bennett -- The novel as heartbeat : the dead narrator in Mike McCormack's Solar bones / Neil Murphy -- Dead man/and woman talking : narratives from beyond the grave / Philippe Carrard -- The view from upstream : authority and projection in Fontenelle's Nouveaux dialogues des morts / Jessica Goodman -- Genres. Big questions : re-visioning and re-scripting death narratives in children's literature / Lesley Clement -- In the U-bend with Moaning Myrtle : thinking about death in YA literature / Karen Coats -- Death and mourning in graphic narrative / José Alaniz -- Death and documentaries : heuristics for the real in an age of simulation / Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter -- Death and the fanciulla / Reed Way Dasenbrock -- Death, literary form, and affective comprehension : primary emotions and the neurological basis of genre / Ronald Schleifer -- Site, Space, and Spatiality. Ecocide and the Anthropocene : death and the environment / Flore Coulouma -- A Disney death : Coco, Black Panther, and the limits of the afterlife / Stacy Thompson -- Suicide in the early modern elegiac tradition / Kelly McGuire -- Institutions and elegies : viewing the dead in W. B. Yeats and John Wieners / Barry Sheils & Julie Walsh -- Death "after long silence" : auditing Agamben's metaphysics of negativity in Yeats's lyric / Samuel Caleb Wee -- The spatialization of death in the novels of Virginia Woolf / Ian Tan -- "Memento mori" : memory, death and posterity in Singapore's poetry / Jen Crawford -- Rituals, memorials, and epitaphs. Death and the dead in verse funerary epigrams of Ancient Greece / Arianna Gullo -- Fictional will / Helen Swift -- Monumentalism, death, and genre in Shakespeare / John Tangney -- Death and gothic romanticism : dilating in/upon the graveyard, meditating among the tombs / Carol Margaret Davison -- Death, literature, and the Victorian era / Jolene Zigarovich -- The aura of the phonographic relic : hearing the voices of the dead / Angela Frattarola -- Anecdotal death : Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English poets / Laura Davies -- Biography : life after death / Ira Nade -- Living with death : writing, mourning, and consolation. "An immense expenditure of energy come to nothing" : philosophy, literature, and death in Peter Weiss' Abschied von den Eltern / Christopher Hamilton -- Paradox, death, and the divine / Jamie Lin -- Inner seeing and death anxiety in Aidan Higgins's Blind Man's Bluff and other life writing / Lara O'Muirithe -- Autothanatography and contemporary poetry / Ivan Callus -- When time stops : death and autobiography in contemporary personal narratives / Rosalía Baena -- "Grief made her insubstantial to herself" : illness, aging, and death in a. s. byatt's little black book of stories / Graham Matthews -- Historical engagements. On the corpse of a loved one in the era of brain death : bioethics and fictions / Catherine Belling -- Death to the music of time : reticence in Anthony Powell's mediated narratives of death / Catherine Hoffmann -- Death and Chinese war television dramas: (re)configuring ethical judgments in The disguiser / W. Michelle Wang -- Where do the disappeared go? Writing the genocide in East Timor / Kit Ying Lye -- "Doubtfull drede" : dying at the end of the Middle Ages / Walter Wadiak -- Urbanization, ambiguity, and social death in Charles Brockden Brown's Arthur Mervyn / Wanlin Li -- Coda / Julian Gough