The Savage God: A Study of Suicide"Suicide," writes the notes English poet and critic A. Alvarez, "has permeated Western culture like a dye that cannot be washed out." Although the aims of this compelling, compassionate work are broadly cultural and literary, the narrative is rooted in personal experience: it begins with a long memoir of Sylvia Plath, and ends with an account of the author's own suicide attempt. Within this dramatic framework, Alvarez launches his enquiry into the final taboo of human behavior, and traces changing attitudes towards suicide from the perspective of literature. He follows the black thread leading from Dante through Donne and the romantic agony, to the Savage God at the heart of modern literature. |
Contents
Fallacies | 99 |
Theories | 113 |
Feelings | 143 |
Suicide and Literature | 163 |
Dante and the Middle Ages | 167 |
John Donne and the Renaissance | 173 |
William Cowper Thomas Chatterton and the Age of Reason | 193 |
The Romantic Agony | 223 |
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Common terms and phrases
absurd argument artist became becomes began believe Bell Jar Biathanatos body called century Cesare Pavese Chatterton Christian Church cide commit suicide Cowper creative crime Dada Dadaist dead death instinct depression despair despite destructive died Donne's Dostoievsky Ellen West everything example fact fantasies father Fedden feeling felt finally Freud friends genius gesture guilt hanged horror John Berryman John Donne kill kind later less letter literary living logic London longer madness means melancholia melancholy ment moral mortal sin murder nature never night once pain Pavese Perhaps pleasure poet poetry political primitive rational reason Roman Rowley poems seemed sense simply social society style suicide suicide-rate super-ego survive Sylvia Plath T. S. Eliot terror theory thing Thomas Chatterton thought tion took totalitarian turned verse W. B. YEATS wanted Werther whole wife writing wrote young