Arts of Dying: Literature and Finitude in Medieval England
D. Vance Smith
Abstract
This book argues that the problem of how to designate death produces a long tradition of literature about dying in Old and Middle English, a literature that intensively and self-reflexively imagines how the very terms of literature might solve the problem of the termination of life. The book ranges between close readings of literature’s attempts to imagine a relation with death in major poets like Geoffrey Chaucer and the Pearl poet, and philosophical attempts to designate death despite its impossibility: the relation between finitude and form. The book also explores the relation between cry ... More
This book argues that the problem of how to designate death produces a long tradition of literature about dying in Old and Middle English, a literature that intensively and self-reflexively imagines how the very terms of literature might solve the problem of the termination of life. The book ranges between close readings of literature’s attempts to imagine a relation with death in major poets like Geoffrey Chaucer and the Pearl poet, and philosophical attempts to designate death despite its impossibility: the relation between finitude and form. The book also explores the relation between crypt and archive, the philosophy of language and logic, and contemporary theorizing about death and dying, from Martin Heidegger to Maurice Blanchot and Gillian Rose.
Keywords:
archive,
crypt,
death,
dying,
finitude,
form,
medieval literature,
Maurice Blanchot,
Gillian Rose
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2020 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226640853 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: September 2020 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226641041.001.0001 |
