Speaking Grief in English Literary Culture: Shakespeare to Milton

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Margo Swiss, David A. Kent
Duquesne University Press, 2002 - 365 pàgines
Grief is a universal emotion expressed in response to numerous forms of loss or bereavement. Expressing grief has been subject to varying degrees of religious and social constraint in different periods of history and in different cultures and traditions. This collection of 12 essays by both established and newer scholars explores the question of grief expression in a wide variety of writers and genres in the period from Shakespeare to Milton. Contributors examine lyric poems and plays as well as prose works such as sermons, diaries, and medical treatises to disclose the challenges faced by writers of both sexes in dealing with the trauma of loss. The roots of grief expression in personal experience or collective loss, or as described in scientific speculation or literary forms, demonstrate both the complexity and the centrality of this subject in the social and literary history of the period. Actors debate the topic of sorrow, poets wrestle with decorum and sincerity, women diarists confide their private feelings, clerics admonish the grieving with the consolations of faith, and writers discover the limitations of language and articulation in seeking to express sorrow. In the aftermath of deconstructive analyses of literature, there has been a discernible turn toward rediscovering the emotional textures of literature. The subject of grief is a good example of this trend, and this collection is one of the first efforts to address this theme in relation to a specific period of literary history.

Des de l'interior del llibre

Continguts

7 Maternal Elegies by Mary Carey Lucy Hastings
7
in Shakespeare
20
Lyric Grief in Donne and Jonson
42
Copyright

No s’hi han mostrat 11 seccions

Frases i termes més freqüents

Sobre l'autor (2002)

MARGO SWISS teaches Renaissance studies and creative writing at York University, Toronto. Dr Swiss has published essays on Milton and Donne and coedited a collection of essays on Milton. Her own poetry has been anthologised on three occasions, and she published a collection in 1996. DAVID A KENT teaches at Centennial College, Toronto. He also has co-edited a collection on Milton, a selection of Romantic parodies, and the selected prose works of Christina Rossetti.

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