black death ritual profound echoes of the end

BLACK DEATH RITUAL PROFOUND ECHOES OF THE END FULL

Sharon Talley is the author of the Student Companion to Herman Melville. Lively and engaging, Ambrose Bierce and the Dance of Death adds valuable new insights not only to the study of Bierce but to that of nineteenth-century American literature in general. This approach makes it possible to discern links among texts that resolve some of the still puzzling ambiguities that have-until now-precluded a fuller understanding of both the man and his writings. Previous attempts to consider Bierce from a psychological perspective have been superficial, often reductive Freudian readings of individual stories such as “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and “The Death of Halpin Frayser.” This new volume not only updates these interpretations with insights from post-Freudian theorists but uses contemporary death theory as a framework to analyze the sources and expressions of Bierce’s attitudes about death and dying. This new book contributes to the ongoing reassessment by providing new contexts for joining the texts in his canon in meaningful ways. Scholarly interest in Bierce, whose work has long been undervalued, has grown significantly in recent years.

BLACK DEATH RITUAL PROFOUND ECHOES OF THE END FULL

Rudnytsky, author of Reading Psychoanalysis: Freud, Rank, Ferenczi, GroddeckĪmbrose Bierce and the Dance of Death uses psychoanalytic theory in combination with historical, cultural, and literary contexts to examine the complex motif of death in a full range of Bierce’s writings. This judicious and comprehensive book will give a major boost to the reassessment of Bierce’s place in American letters.” “Sharon Talley draws on psychoanalytic theory to illuminate the connections between Bierce’s life and works, without ever losing sight of the historical contexts-especially his experience in the Civil War-that also shaped his creativity. Tuggle is the first scholar to analyze Whitman’s role in medically memorializing the human cadaver and its abandoned parts. Remains from several amputee soldiers whom Whitman nursed in the Washington hospitals became specimens in the Army Medical Museum.

Brinton, founding curator of the Army Medical Museum, and Silas Weir Mitchell, the neurologist who discovered phantom limb syndrome.

Tuggle unveils previously unrecognized connections between Whitman and the leading “medical men” of his era, such as the surgeon John H. Grounded in archival discoveries, Afterlives traces the origins of nineteenth-century America’s preservation compulsion, illuminating the influences of botanical, medical, spiritualist, and sentimental discourses on Whitman’s work. Whitman transitioned from a fervent opponent of medical bodysnatching to a literary celebrity who left behind instructions for his own autopsy, including the removal of his brain for scientific study. In the space of a few decades, dissection evolved from a posthumous punishment inflicted on criminals to an element of preservationist technology worthy of the presidential corpse of Abraham Lincoln. Walt Whitman witnessed rapid changes in relations between the living and the dead. The Afterlives of Specimens explores the space between science and sentiment, the historical moment when the human cadaver became both lost love object and subject of anatomical violence.

Black death ritual profound echoes of the end