Death in Literature

Author(s):  
Joseph Carroll
Keyword(s):  
PMLA ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caryl Emerson

Mikhail Bakhtin's work on Dostoevsky is well known. Less familiar, perhaps, is Bakhtin's attitude toward the other great Russian nineteenth-century novelist, Leo Tolstoy. This essay explores that “Tolstoy connection,” both as a means for interrogating Bakhtin's analytic categories and as a focus for evaluating the larger tradition of “Tolstoy versus Dostoevsky.” Bakhtin is not a particularly good reader of Tolstoy. But he does make provocative use of the familiar binary model to pursue his most insistent concerns: monologism versus dialogism, the relationship of authors to their characters, the role of death in literature and life, and the concept of the self. Bakhtin's comments on these two novelists serve as a good starting point for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the Bakhtinian model in general and suggest ways one might recast the dialogue between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky on somewhat different, more productive ground.


2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 147-162
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Małecka

Abstract Known yet unknown, undiscovered yet constantly discovered and re-discovered, death has always been a gold mine providing ideas, work and wages for scientists, sociologists, philosophers, artists, literary critics, and many others who find life’s provisionality in any way “uncanny”. This article looks at select literary definitions of death that present mortality as a concept both familiar and unfamiliar, comforting and discomforting, domestic and strange. Like the Freudian term “uncanny”, the nature of mortality is complex, mysterious and elusive. As Terry Eagleton (2003: 211) points out, “[d]eath is both alien and intimate to us, neither wholly strange nor purely one’s own”. While some of Freud’s ideas from his essay “The ‘Uncanny’” are used as the basis for discussion here, this analysis is not limited to a psychoanalytic perspective and includes psychological, sociological, medical and literary references which help explore different aspects of death in literature.


2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70
Author(s):  
Romain Vanlandschoot

Uit de nalatenschap van dokter Alfons Bruwier (1857-1939) dook een  brief van 15 februari 1877 op, geschreven door een zekere Romain Dewilde. Samen met Albrecht Rodenbach, Constant Lievens, Aloïs Bruwier e.a. behoorde hij tot de zgn. ‘Wonderklasse’ van Hugo Verriest, uit het schooljaar 1875-1876. De brief situeert zich dus in volle ontstaan van de Blauwvoeterie. De brief werd geschreven in het Klein Seminarie van Roeselare, op de afdeling Wijsbegeerte, waar Lievens de allereerste opleiding tot het priesterschap volgde. De aanleiding tot deze brief was de voordracht van Hugo Verriest, op 3 februari 1877 in Leuven, voor het genootschap Met Tijd en Vlijt over Leven en Dood in de Letterkunde en de Taal, nog datzelfde voorjaar in brochurevorm uitgegeven. De voordracht zelf was een belangrijke opstap naar de formulering van een eigen esthetica bij Verriest. De indruk die deze priesterleraar naliet bij zijn oud-leerlingen Albrecht Rodenbach, Constant Lievens en Alfons Bruwier, was overweldigend. Verriest benadrukte de groeikracht uit eigen Vlaams leven en zei in Leuven: “onze taal herwordt in onze herwordende jonkheid en volk”. Precies dat wat de briefschrijver met overtuiging beweerde: “In ons ligt er een leven dat eigen is.” Voorafgaand aan die brief van 15 februari waren er twee antecedenten. In oktober 1876 stuurde Rodenbach een gedicht aan Lievens, over hun beider toekomst, elk langs hun eigen levensbaan, “voor God en 't Vlaamsche land”. In december schreef Lievens dan een brief aan een ander oud-klasmakker in Leuven, boordevol herinneringen aan dit gedicht en aan de spanningen van het voorgaande schooljaar, bij het ontstaan van de Blauwvoeterie aan het Klein Seminarie van Roeselare. Het gedicht van Rodenbach en de voordracht van Verriest hebben de Roeselaarse groep sterk beroerd. ________ A letter from the circle of Albrecht Rodenbach to Aloïs Bruwier, 15 February 1877From the legacy of Doctor Aloïs Bruwier (1857-1939), a letter dated 15 February 1877 has emerged. The author Romain Dewilde, together with Albrecht Rodenbach, Constant Lievens, Aloïs Bruwier a.o. belonged to the so-called 'Wonderklas' (class of gifted students) of Hugo Verriest tn the school year 1875-1876. Therefore, the letter must be seen in the context of the Blauwvoeterie.The letter was written in the Minor Seminary of Roeselare, in the section of philosophy, where Lievens received his preliminary training for the priesthood. The immediate cause for this letter was Hugo Verriest's discourse about Life and Death in Literature and Language to the Society Met Tijd en Vlijt [With time and Diligence] on 3 February 1877 in Louvain. This speech was published in pamphlet form that same spring. For Verriest, the discourse constituted an important step to formulating his own aesthetics. This priest teacher left an overwhelming impression on his former pupils Albrecht Rodenbach, Constant Lievens and Aloïs Bruwier. Verriest emphasized the vitality from their own Flemish life, and he said in Louvain: "our language is reborn in the rebirth of our youth and our nation." This is exactly what was also started with conviction in the letter: "We have a life of our own within us." Prior to that letter of 15 February, there were two antecedents. In October 1876, Rodenbach sent Lievens a poem, about the future each of them would have, each according to his own future life, "for God and the Flemish nation". In December, Lievens wrote a letter to another former classmate in Louvain, overflowing with memories of this poem and the tensions of the previous school year, when the Blauwvoeterie originated at the Minor Seminary in Roeselare. Rodenbach's poem and the discourse by Verriest left a strong impression on the group in Roeselare.


1981 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Mills Campbell
Keyword(s):  

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Skelton

This paper considers how death and dying are presented in literature. A wide range of texts, principally but not exclusively from the English language tradition, is used to illustrate themes. Broad categories are suggested for the study of death: some authors give personal accounts of their impending death or their sense of bereavement; some use literature to structure and order our thoughts about death; and some treat death as a literary device, using it, for example, as a symbolic representation of the decay of society. It concludes that the biggest obstacles that health professionals and patients face as they attempt to understand death in literature are concerned not with a lack of appropriate emotional depth, but with difficulties either in understanding the conventions of literature or in coming to terms with the cultural gaps imposed by time and place.


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