Dwelling on Grief. Narratives of Mourning Across Time and Forms

How and why do we write about mourning? How do different narratives encourage us to dwell on and in grief? What forms of community and even consolation might mournful texts offer? In this broad-ranging volume, fourteen contributors grapple with these questions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, in particular Modern Languages, English, Music, Politics, and Biology. The investigation starts with a medieval poet, Dante Alighieri, whose writings reflect extensively and emotively on loss. A key focus is also on how medieval expressions have been appropriated and reimagined in the twentieth century. Several contributions take us beyond literature to the non-human (do other animals mourn?) and the post-human (present-day environmental writings). Throughout, these essays embrace the autobiographical, exploring the relationship between the experience of grief and different forms of artistic impression.