1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910787174503321

Titolo

The power of death : contemporary reflections on death in western society / / edited by Maria-José Blanco and Ricarda Vidal

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York ; ; Oxford, England : , : Berghahn, , 2015

©2015

ISBN

1-78533-510-3

1-78238-434-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (272 p.)

Disciplina

306.9

Soggetti

Death

Death in literature

Funeral rites and ceremonies

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di contenuto

Title page; Copyright; 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; 5 A Way of Sorrows for the Twentieth Century; 6 From Self-Erasure to Self-Affirmation; 7 Habeas Corpse ; 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 Sells10 Screening the Dying Individual Film, Mortality and the Ethics of Spectatorship; 11 The Broken Body as Spectacle; 12 Death on Display; PART IV CEMETERIES AND FUNERALS; 13 The Romanian Carnival of Death and the Merry Cemetery of Săpânţa; 14 In the Dead of Night; 15 Scenarios of Death in Contexts of Mobility; 16 Karaoke Death; PART V PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON DEATH; 17 Death is Not What it Used to Be; 18 The Dad Project; Index

Sommario/riassunto

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 ph