Smiling at daggers in Cato, a Tragedy -- Failed seriousness in the old Arcadia and Gallathea -- Slapstick and synapothanumenon in Antony and Cleopatra -- Trolling decorum in Hamlet and Timon of Athens -- The Open window in Biathanatos -- Inventing suicide in Religio Medici -- A cartoon about suicide prevention in Paradise Lost -- Smiling at daggers in Cato, a Tragedy -- Epilogue.
Summary:
"Voluntary death in literature is not always a matter of tragedy. Drew Daniel identifies a surprisingly common aesthetic attitude that he calls "the joy of the worm," after Cleopatra's embrace of the deadly asp in Shakespeare's play-a pattern where voluntary death is imagined as an occasion for humor, mirth, ecstatic pleasure, even joy and celebration. Daniel draws both a historical and a conceptual distinction between "self-killing" and "suicide." Standard intellectual histories of suicide in the early modern period have understandably emphasized attitudes of abhorrence, scorn, and severity toward voluntary death. Daniel reads an archive of early modern literary scenes and passages, dating from 1534 to 1713, that complicates this picture. In their own distinct responses to the surrounding attitude of censure, writers including Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, and Addison imagine death not as sin or sickness, but instead as heroic gift, sexual release, elemental return, amorous fusion, or political self-rescue. The "joy of the worm" emerges here as an aesthetic mode that shades into schadenfreude, sadistic cruelty, and deliberate "trolling," but can also underwrite powerful feelings of belonging, devotion, and love"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.