Suicidal Poets Society

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Diana requests:
"> I'm planning a seminar next term on death, mourning and suicide in
> literature.  Someone mentioned Werther--any other suggestions?  I
> thought maybe Hamlet and Gerald's Party, inter alia. I'm not limited by
> genre, period or geography."


Yeesh!  One could start with the Epic of Gilgamish!  And there's every
Elegy ever written, including Grey's Elegy in a Country Graveyard,
Milton's Lycidas, Mistress Quickly's eulogy for Falstaff, Thantopsis,
Death of a Salesman, The Dead, and lotsa stuff by the Queens of self-
destruction, Plath and Sexton--not to mention the darker thoughts of
Lowell, Berryman, and oh yes, Keats's Ode to a Nightingale and Ginsburg's
KADDISH.

Do you have any limits--historical, cultural or otherwise?

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)