Death in American Texts and Performances

Corpses, Ghosts, and the Reanimated Dead

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism
Cover of the book Death in American Texts and Performances by Mark Pizzato, Taylor and Francis
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Mark Pizzato ISBN: 9781317154440
Publisher: Taylor and Francis Publication: May 13, 2016
Imprint: Routledge Language: English
Author: Mark Pizzato
ISBN: 9781317154440
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Publication: May 13, 2016
Imprint: Routledge
Language: English

How do twentieth and twenty-first century artists bring forth the powerful reality of death when it exists in memory and lived experience as something that happens only to others? Death in American Texts and Performances takes up this question to explore the modern and postmodern aesthetics of death. Working between and across genres, the contributors examine literary texts and performance media, including Robert Lowell's For the Union Dead, Luis Valdez' Dark Root of a Scream, Amiri Baraka's Dutchman, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, John Edgar Wideman's The Cattle Killing, Toni Morrison's Sula and Song of Solomon, Don DeLillo's White Noise and Falling Man, and HBO's Six Feet Under. As the contributors struggle to convey the artist's crisis of representation, they often locate the dilemma in the gap between artifice and nature, where loss is performed and where re-membering is sometimes literally reenacted through the bodily gesture. While artists confront the impossibility of total recovery or transformation, so must the contributors explore the gulf between real corpses and their literary or performative reconstructions. Ultimately, the volume shows both artist and critic grappling with the dilemma of showing how the aesthetics of death as absence is made meaningful in and by language.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

How do twentieth and twenty-first century artists bring forth the powerful reality of death when it exists in memory and lived experience as something that happens only to others? Death in American Texts and Performances takes up this question to explore the modern and postmodern aesthetics of death. Working between and across genres, the contributors examine literary texts and performance media, including Robert Lowell's For the Union Dead, Luis Valdez' Dark Root of a Scream, Amiri Baraka's Dutchman, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, John Edgar Wideman's The Cattle Killing, Toni Morrison's Sula and Song of Solomon, Don DeLillo's White Noise and Falling Man, and HBO's Six Feet Under. As the contributors struggle to convey the artist's crisis of representation, they often locate the dilemma in the gap between artifice and nature, where loss is performed and where re-membering is sometimes literally reenacted through the bodily gesture. While artists confront the impossibility of total recovery or transformation, so must the contributors explore the gulf between real corpses and their literary or performative reconstructions. Ultimately, the volume shows both artist and critic grappling with the dilemma of showing how the aesthetics of death as absence is made meaningful in and by language.

More books from Taylor and Francis

Cover of the book War, Peace and Progress in the 21st Century by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book The Person Who Is Me by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book Culture and Power in the Classroom by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book Anamnesis and the Eucharist by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book When All the Friends Have Gone by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book Social Policy in a Changing Society by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book Journalists, Sources, and Credibility by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book Psychosomatic Disorders in Seventeenth-Century French Literature by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book Revival: Science and Religion (1935) by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book A Preface to Marlowe by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book Equality Renewed by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book Qualitative Research on Illness, Wellbeing and Self-Growth by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book International Trade by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book Routledge Handbook on Native American Justice Issues by Mark Pizzato
Cover of the book The Shape of Reason by Mark Pizzato
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy