Fictional Death and the Modernist Enterprise

by Alan Warren Friedman

Death and dying once seemed definitive, public, and appropriate; but the Industrial Revolution, the Great War, and the reenvisioning of reality by scientists and philosophers destabilized cultural norms. In Fictional Death and the Modernist Enterprise Friedman traces the semiotics of death and dying in twentieth-century fiction, history, and culture. He describes how modernist writers either elided rituals of dying, or, rediscovering the body, transformed Victorian "aesthetic death" into modern "dirty death." And he shows how, through postmodern fiction and AIDS narratives, death has once again become cultural currency.

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Burcu]

Note to self: There are separate chapters on E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Graham Greene, and Lawrence Durrell