Variations on the Ethics of Mourning in Modern Literature in French

From Freud and psychoanalysis to Derrida and philosophy, the question of mourning has been central to a whole strain of modern thought, especially in France. This fascinating and illuminating collection of essays explores the question in a wide range of intellectual and literary settings, from the French Revolution down through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is a tour de force. (Christopher Prendergast FBA, Kings College, Cambridge) This volume compellingly explores the intersection of ethics and aesthetics, showing how literature can enrich our sense of the complexity of mourning, grief and loss. It provides a significant contribution to scholarship on mourning, understood as a never-ending process of relationality. (Hanna Meretoja, University of Turku, Finland)

Carole Bourne-Taylor is Associate Professor of French, Fellow and Tutor at Brasenose College, Oxford. Her interdisciplinary research includes publications on literature in English and French, phenomenology and the performing arts. Sara-Louise Cooper is Lecturer in French at the University of Kent. Her research interests include migration, memory studies and comparative critical method. She has published work on Patrick Chamoiseau, Georges Perec, Vladimir Nabokov and Maryse Cond. She is currently working on a monograph on contemporary Caribbean writing and world literature.

Contents: Dominique Rabat: Prface Dominique Rabat: Translation by Stephen Romer: Preface Carole Bourne-Taylor: Introduction Unmournable Revolutions Benjamin Thurston: Impossible Mourning: Funeral Orations for Louis XVI (1814 1815) Rachel Benot: Unmourned Histories in Gustave Flauberts Lducation sentimentale Inconsolable (Af)filiations Jennifer Rushworth: The Rhythm of Mourning in Proust (with Barthes and Derrida) Henriette Korthals Altes: Mourning Their Mothers: Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and the Gift of Tears Khalid Lyamlahy: With Barthes and Derrida in the Margins of a Funereal Song: The Poetics of Maternal Mourning in the Work of Abdelkbir Khatibi Sara- Louise Cooper: Mourning the Mother, Mourning the World: Patrick Chamoiseaus La Matire de labsence Pothique: Between New Elegy and Anti-Elegy Ariane Mildenberg: The Door Pushed Back the Light: On a Phenomenology of Mourning in Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jacques Roubaud Daisy Sainsbury: The Ends and Beginnings of Language in Valrie Rouzeaus Pas revoir Carole Bourne-Taylor: Poethic Justice: Re-incarnations in Emmanuel Merles Poetry Sara- Louise Cooper: Conclusion: Mourning in Motion from Ireland to the Caribbean.