Introduction: Romanticism and Suicide. Issue 12 (December 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Faubert, Michelle; Reynolds, Nicole
• Is Part Of: Literature compass. Volume 12:Issue 12(2015)
• Page Start: 641
• Page End: 651
• Publication Date: 2015-12
• Subjects: English literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; American literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Littérature -- Périodiques; Arts and Humanities -- Literature; Electronic reference sources; 805
• DOI: 10.1111/lic3.12285
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1741-4113

Abstract

Abstract: This essay introduces the issue of Literature Compass that explores the topic of female suicide and Romantic literature, culture, and criticism. Although little critical work has been published on suicide and Romanticism to date, the subject addresses concerns that several major recent works on Romanticism have studied, such as the body and medicine, psychology, violence, and protest against political and domestic tyranny. Historically, too, the topic of Romanticism and suicide appears tangentially in well‐known scholarship about melancholy, madness, genius, the sublime, and the transcendental. As the articles in this issue make clear, female suicide in the Romantic era emerges as a powerful trope through which a range of discourses – aesthetic, scientific, religious, philosophical, and political – converge to manage the culture's most unknowable, recalcitrant subjects and bodies, women and subalterns chief among these. By exploring the ways in which current and established criticism has touched on issues related to Romanticism and suicide, and in particular female suicide, this introduction argues for the timely relevance of the topic and highlights new directions for further inquiry.