Issues of death

the long version

"Death, like most experiences that we think of as 'natural', is a product of the human imagination: all animals die, but only human beings suffer Death; and what they suffer is shaped by their own time and culture. Tragedy was one of the principal instruments through which the culture of early modern England imagined the encounter with mortality. The essays in this book approach the theatrical reinvention of Death from three perspectives. Those in Part 1 explore Death as a trope of apocalypse - a moment of un-veiling or dis-covery that is figured both in the fearful nakedness of the Danse Macabre and in the shameful 'openings' enacted in the new theatres of anatomy." "In Part 2, Neill explores the psychological and affective consequences of tragedy's fiercely end-driven narrative in a number of plays where a longing for narrative closure is pitched against a particularly intense dread of ending." "Finally, Part 3 focuses on the way tragedy articulates its challenge to the undifferentiating power of death through conventions and motifs borrowed from the funeral arts."--BOOK JACKET.