Joy of the worm : suicide and pleasure in early modern English literature /

Joy of the worm : suicide and pleasure in early modern English literature /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Daniel, Drew, 1971- author.
Imprint:	Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2022. ©2022
Description:	279 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
Language:	English
Series:	Thinking literature Thinking literature.
Subject:	English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism. Suicide in literature. English literature -- Early modern. Suicide in literature. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12775201

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780226816494 0226816494 9780226816500 0226816508 9780226816517
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
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"--

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Call Number:	PR408.S845 D36 2022
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