Reanimating grief

Waking the dead in literature, theatre and performance

William McEvoy

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781526176684
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

Reanimating grief is a wide-ranging study of the poetics of bereavement in theatre, literature and song. It examines the way cultural works reanimate the dead in the form of ghosts, memories or scenes of mourning, and uses critical and creative writing to express grief's subjectivity and uniqueness. It covers classic texts from Greek tragedy and Shakespeare to works by Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett, Enda Walsh, Sally Rooney and Maggie O'Farrell. The book argues that the return of the dead in theatre and fiction is an act of memorial and an expression of love that illustrates the relationship between art, enchantment and impossibility.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Genealogies of grief: classic reanimations
• 2 Animate objects of mourning
• 3 Grief, fiction, passion
• 4 Dead forms, living characters
• 5 Burying the living and the dead
• 6 Musical afterlives
• 7 Mothersongs
• Conclusion: impossible reanimations
• Bibliography
• Index