Cross-disciplinary study of the ways that shifts in cultural
attitudes and beliefs have altered how death is mourned and the
dead memorialized. Gilbert (English/Univ. of Calif., Davis) has
previously written on this subject from a personal perspective
(Wrongful Death, 1995) and from a literary one (Inventions of
Farewell, 2001). Here she combines autobiographical narrative and
literary criticism with anthropological, cultural and sociological
studies to give a broader, more complex picture. After the
terrorist attacks of 2001, her academic study of the contemporary
elegy evolved into a more general study of dying, death,
bereavement and mourning in Western cultures. Personal experiences
open each chapter in Part One, "Arranging My Mourning," which
considers such universal aspects of death as grief, widowhood,
memorials and the desire to communicate with the dead. In Part Two,
"History Makes Death," Gilbert turns to the work of
anthropologists, sociologists and historians, but also uses
personal stories, the music of Brahms and the writings of Evelyn
Waugh and Jessica Mitford as tools. This section examines changes
in attitudes towards death and in the rituals and language
associated with it; the effects of 20th-century technologies on
everything from genocide to hospital-managed dying; and the
documentation of death through film and still photography. Part
Three, "The Handbook of Heartbreak," appears to be the core of her
original literary study on the poetics of grief. Here the author
focuses on how modern poets express confusion, anxiety and distress
over death. While it is filled with numerous excerpts from, and
analysis of, the works of 20th-century American and British poets,
Gilbert ventures beyond the written word to consider the effects of
the horrifying images of 9/11, attempts by bereaved individuals to
find closure, hastily improvised public memorials and the World
Trade Center memorial design as a reflection of the absence and
blankness now associated with the end of life. A scholarly,
well-researched work that assumes, even demands, a strong interest
in contemporary English-language literature. (Kirkus Reviews)
Prominent critic, poet, and memoirist Sandra M. Gilbert explores
our relationship to death though literature, history, poetry, and
societal practices. Does death change;and if it does, how has it
changed in the last century? And how have our experiences and
expressions of grief changed? Did the traumas of Hiroshima and the
Holocaust transform our thinking about mortality? More recently,
did the catastrophe of 9/11 alter our modes of mourning? And are
there at the same time aspects of grief that barely change from age
to age? Seneca wrote, "Anyone can stop a man's life but no one his
death; a thousand doors open on to it." This inevitability has left
varying marks on all human cultures. Exploring expressions of
faith, burial customs, photographs, poems, and memoirs, acclaimed
author Sandra M. Gilbert brings to the topic of death the critical
skill that won her fame for "The Madwoman in the Attic" and other
books, as she examines both the changelessness of grief and the
changing customs that mark contemporary mourning.
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