The Power of Death : : Contemporary Reflections on Death in Western Society / / ed. by Maria-José Blanco, Ricarda Vidal.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• MitwirkendeR: Banwell, Julia,; Blaine, Diana York,; Blanco, Maria-José,; Cap-Bun, Marina,; Crisu, Corina,; David, Eleanor,; Deering, Bel,; Horne, John,; Isla, Lala,; Iuliano, Fiorenzo,; Jenkins, Catherine,; Lushet, Natasha,; Mapril, José,; Marx, Wolfgang,; Saraiva, Clara,; Shillabeer, Rebecca,; Simpson, Lynne M.,; Vidal, Ricarda,; am, Briony,
• HerausgeberIn: Blanco, Maria-José,; Vidal, Ricarda,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (272 p.)

The social and cultural changes of the last century have transformed death from an everyday fact to something hidden from view. Shifting between the practical and the theoretical, the professional and the intimate, the real and the fictitious, this collection of essays explores the continued power of death over our lives. It examines the idea and experience of death from an interdisciplinary perspective, including studies of changing burial customs throughout Europe; an account of a“dying party” in the Netherlands; examinations of the fascination with violent death in crime fiction and the phenomenon of serial killer art; analyses of death and bereavement in poetry, fiction, and autobiography; and a look at audience reactions to depictions of death on screen. By studying and considering how death is thought about in the contemporary era, we might restore the natural place it has in our lives.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Notes on contributors -- Introduction -- Part I: Death in Society -- 1 Life Extension, Immortality and the Patient Voice -- 2 Beyond ‘mourning and melancholia’ -- 3 War and requiem compositions in the twentieth century -- Part II: Death in Literature -- 4 Understanding Death/Writing Bereavement: The Writer’s Experience -- 5 A Way of Sorrows for the Twentieth Century: Margherita Guidacci’s La Via Crucis dell’umanità -- 6 From Self-Erasure to Self-Affirmation: Communally Acknowledged ‘Good Death’ in Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying -- 7 Habeas Corpse: The Dead Body of Evidence in John Grisham’s The Client -- 8 The Fascination with Torture and Death in Twenty-first-Century Crime Fiction -- Part III: Death in Visual Culture -- 9 The Power of Negative Creation – Why Art by Serial Killers Sells -- 10 Screening the Dying Individual: Film, Mortality and the Ethics of Spectatorship -- 11 The Broken Body as Spectacle: Looking at Death and Injury in Sport -- 12 Death on Display: The Ideological Function of the Mummies of the World Exhibit -- Part IV: Cemeteries and Funerals -- 13 The Romanian Carnival of Death and the Merry Cemetery of Săpânţa -- 14 In the dead of night: A Nocturnal Exploration of Heterotopia in the Graveyard -- 15 Scenarios of Death in Contexts of Mobility: Guineans and Bangladeshis in Lisbon -- 16 Karaoke Death: Intertextuality in Active Euthanasia Practices -- Part V: Personal Reflections on Death -- 17 Death is Not What it Used to Be: A Comparison between Customs of Death in the UK and Spain. Changes in the Last Thirty-Five Years -- 18 The Dad Project -- Index