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Joy of the Worm
Suicide and Pleasure in Early Modern English Literature
Series: Thinking Literature
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Joy of the Worm
$5699
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This book will appeal to readers interested in early modern literature, cultural history, and philosophical approaches to death and aesthetics. Scholars and thoughtful general readers seeking a challenging and provocative perspective on voluntary death in literature will find it rewarding.
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Description
Consulting an extensive archive of early modern literature, Joy of the Worm asserts that voluntary death in literature is not always a matter of tragedy.
In this study, Drew Daniel identifies a surprisingly common aesthetic attitude that he calls “joy of the worm,” after Cleopatra’s embrace of the deadly asp in Shakespeare’s play—a pattern where voluntary death is imagined as an occasion for humor, mirth, ecstatic pleasure, even joy and celebration.
Daniel draws both a historical and a conceptual distinction between “self-killing” and “suicide.” Standard intellectual histories of suicide in the early modern period have understandably emphasized attitudes of abhorrence, scorn, and severity toward voluntary death. Daniel reads an archive of literary scenes and passages, dating from 1534 to 1713, that complicate this picture.
In their own distinct responses to the surrounding attitude of censure, writers including Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, and Addison imagine death not as sin or sickness, but instead as a heroic gift, sexual release, elemental return, amorous fusion, or political self-rescue. “Joy of the worm” emerges here as an aesthetic mode that shades into schadenfreude, sadistic cruelty, and deliberate “trolling,” but can also underwrite powerful feelings of belonging, devotion, and love.
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Joy of the Worm
Consulting an extensive archive of early modern literature, Joy of the Worm asserts that voluntary death in literature is not always a matter of tragedy. In this study, Drew Daniel identifies a surprisingly common aesthetic attitude that he calls “joy of the worm,” after Cleopatra’s embrace of the deadly asp in Shakespeare’s play—a pattern where voluntary death is imagined as...Paperback$5699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Chinese Whispers
Chinese Whispers examines multiple contact zones between the Anglophone and Sinophone worlds, investigating how poetry both enables and complicates the transpacific production of meaning. In this new book, the noted critic and best-selling author Yunte Huang explores the dynamics of poetry and poetics in the age of globalization, particularly questions of translatability, universality, and risk in the transpacific context. Chinese...Paperback$4799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Praised for its bold and sensitive exploration, Joy of the Worm challenges conventional views on suicide by presenting complex, nuanced readings where cruelty and tenderness mingle. Melissa E. Sanchez highlights Daniel's lucid prose and humane analysis of how aesthetic representations capture the social and emotional complexity of self-destruction. The book is noted for its revelatory insight into the levity and joy intertwined with fatal choice.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780226816500
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 02 May 2022
Country: United States
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Illustration: 3 halftones
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 20.0mm
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 399g
Pages: 288
About the Author
Drew Daniel is associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Twenty Jazz Funk Greats and The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology of the English Renaissance.
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