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Ten years after the WWII, Geoffrey Gorer claimed that „natural“ death had become unmentionable in the English society. Violent death, on the other hand, became especially popular as a key element of „low“ genres such as detective stories, thrillers, westerns, war stories and horror comics. Decades later, however, a new kind of writing begins to emerge in Europe that contests this narrative. In the seminar, we will be looking at thanatographies, a type of autobiographical writing concerned with „natural“ death of close persons and the following grief. Thanatographies engage with the taboo topic of death and grief and seek to find meaning in the event, and consolation in the retelling, offering new ways of thinking about death in a complex and sensitive manner. Touching upon the deaths and grief related to covid-19, we will also extend our investigation to pathographies, or illness narratives, that often overlap with thanatographies but focus mainly on the processuality of an illness. We will be considering the texts as works of art that stage and perform emotions in different ways, but we will also try to explore their therapeutical/healing potentials. Poslední úprava: Musil Jan, Mgr. (03.02.2025)
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In-class participation: maximum of 2 missed classes, active participation in the discussion Handout: one page with keywords, quotations and questions Essay: an essay of about 1 500 words on a relevant topic (to be discussed in advance) Poslední úprava: Musil Jan, Mgr. (03.02.2025)
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Antoine Leiris. You Will Not Have My Hate. Penguin Books, 2016. Barnes, Julian. Levels of Life. Vintage Books, 2014. De Beauvoir, Simone. A Very Easy Death: A Memoir. Pantheon, 1985. Boyer, Anne. The Undying. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. C. S. Lewis. A Grief Observed. Faber and Faber, 1961. Frank, Arthur W. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Freud, Sigmund. „Mourning and melancholia.“ The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Edited by J. Strachey. Bind XIV. Vintage, 2001, pp. 237–59. Gorer, Geoffrey: The Pornography of Death: Encounter, 1955, no 5, pp. 49–52. Handke, Peter. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. New York Review of Books, 2002. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press, 1982. Ngozi Adichie, Chimamanda. Notes on Grief. Random House, 2021. Susan Sontag. Illness as Metaphor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978. Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories. Penguin Books, 2008.
Ariès, Phillipe. The Hour of Our Death. Translated by Helen Weaver, Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. Free Press, 1997. Blanco, Maria-José, Ricarba Vidal, editors. The Power of Death: Contemporary Reflections of Death in Western Society. Berghahn, 2017. Derrida, Jacques. The Work of Mourning. Brault, Pascale-Anne – Naas, Michael (eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. A.A. Knopf, 2005. Horn, Eva. Trauer schreiben. Die Toten im Text der Goethezeit. Fink, 1998. Jernigan, D.K., & Murphy, N., editors. The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature. Routledge, 2020. Lachmann, Renate. „Mnemonic and Intertextual Aspects of Literature“. Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning, Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2008, pp. 301-310. O’Connor, Mary-Frances. The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2022. Sacks, Peter M. The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. S. W. Goodwin, E. Bronfen, editors. Death and Representation. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Wagner-Egelhaaf, Martina (ed.). Handbook of autobiography | autofiction. Boston: De Gruyter, 2019. Walter, Tony. The Revival of Death. London: Routledge, 1994.
Watkin, William. On Mourning: Theories of Loss in Modern Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. Poslední úprava: Musil Jan, Mgr. (03.02.2025)
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Some sessions will be held online due to research stay abroad. Week 1 (20/2) Introduction: The Taboo of Death and Dying in the 20th century: Gorer’s Pornography of Death, Kristeva’s Powers of Horror
Week 2 (27/2) Sources of Modern Death Writing: Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich
Week 3 (6/3; online) Psychology of Grief: Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia
Week 4 (13/3) Not Work, But Play of Grief: Theories of Autobiographical Writing and Narratives of the Self
Week 5 (20/3; online) Beginnings of Modern Grief Memoirs: Lewis’s Grief Observed
Week 6 (27/3) A Case of Voluntary Death: Handke’s Sorrow Beyond Dreams Feedback session
Week 7 (3/4) Pathographies, or Illness Narratives: Frank’s Wounded Storyteller + Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor
Week 8 (10/4) Dying in Hospital: De Beauvoir’s Very Easy Death
Week 9 (17/4) Cancelled due to dean's holiday
Week 10 (24/4) Writing as Rebirth: Boyer’s Undying AND/OR COVID-19 Losses: Adichie’s Notes on Grief
Week 11 (1/5) Cancelled due to holiday
Week 12 (8/5) Cancelled due to holiday
Week 13 (15/5) Between the Ethics and Aesthetics of Violent Death: Leiris‘s You Will Not Have My Hate Evaluation, closing remarks, paper consultations Poslední úprava: Musil Jan, Mgr. (03.02.2025)
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