Narrative Fiction and Death

Auteur

Sabine Köllmann is an independent scholar based in London. She is the author of Vargas Llosa and the Demons of Politics and A Companion to Mario Vargas Llosa (Támesis). She has published on rhetoric in fiction and contributed to the Oxford Handbook of the Latin American Novel.

Texte du rabat

Narrative Fiction and Death. Dying Imagined offers a new perspective on the study of death in literature: it focuses on narrative fiction that conveys the experience of dying from the internal perspective of a dying protagonist.

Résumé
Narrative Fiction and Death. Dying Imagined offers a new perspective on the study of death in literature: it focuses on narrative fiction that conveys the experience of dying from the internal perspective of a dying protagonist.

Contenu

Introduction

1. Facing execution

Victor Hugo, The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829)

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1869)

Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890)

Jorge Luis Borges, The Secret Miracle (1943)

Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading (1938)

2. Life's choices at death

Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886)

Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962)

3. In the mirror: women and death

Arthur Schnitzler, Fräulein Else (1924)

María Luisa Bombal, The Shrouded Woman (1938)

Ilse Aichinger, Story in Reverse (1949)

Elif Shafak, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019)

4. Death and the writer: autofiction at the limit

Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil (1945)

Maurice Blanchot, The Instant of My Death (1994)

Péter Nádas, Own Death (2002)

Conclusion