Response to Death: The Literary Work of Mourning
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Scholars of literature from Canada and the US offer a cross-cultural sampling of the literary response to death and portrayal of mourning from the Middle Ages to the late 20th century. Among their examples are the York Corpus Christi Cycle, women's languages of lament in 16th-century French lyric, and using up words in Paul Monette's AIDS elegy. Distributed in the US by Michigan State University Press. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, ORLibrary JournalA collection of essays so explicitly literary in approach might have been beyond the purview of this column, but its excellence and breadth, as well as its accessibility and the sensitivity of its authors to perennial questions of mourning and its expressions, cry out for exempting attention. Especial standouts for a wider audience are Stephen Behrendt's essay on the death of Princess Charlotte in 1817, so hauntingly reminiscent of the outpouring of grief after the death of Princess Diana, and Lloyd Edward Kermode's essay on Paul Monette. Highly recommended. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Introduction : the literary work of mourningMourning, heresy, and resurrection in the York Corpus Christi Cycle1Mourning becomes electric : the politics of grief in Shakespeare's Lucrece23The king is dead : mourning the nation in the three parts of Shakespeare's Henry VI31Women's poetry of grief and mourning : the languages of lament in sixteenth-century French lyric55Mourning, myth, and merchandising : the public death of Princess Charlotte75Adam's mourning and the Herculean task in Adam Bede97"Hieroglyphics of sleep and pain" : Djuna Barnes's Anatomy of melancholy117Colossal departures : figuring the lost father in Berryman's and Plath's poetry145Reading the ethics of mourning in the poetry of Donald Hall161"If only I were Isis" : remembrance, ritual, and writing in Lola Lemire Tostevin's Cartouches179Land of their graves : maternity, mourning and nation in Janet Frame, Sara Suleri, and Arundhati Ray201Using up words in Paul Monette's AIDS elegy217
