Aesthetic Experience and Ideas: Death in Literature Flashcards

Vocabulary terms and concepts from GNED 1201 regarding death and grief in literature, including specific literary movements, figures, and definitions.

Symbolism

A physical object used to represent an abstract idea or a figure of speech in literature where a person, object, or situation represents something other than its literal meaning.

Symbolist Literary Movement

A movement that began in France in the 1880s based on the idea that poetry expresses reality by paralleling rather than replicating nature.

Imagism

A 20th-century poetry movement characterized by intentional, clear images and sharp language, often expressed through similes or metaphors.

T.S. Eliot

The American-English leader of the Modernist Movement in poetry, author of "The Hollow Men" and "Four Quartets," and recipient of the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Epigraph

A short quotation, phrase, poem, or sentence placed at the beginning of a document or book to set a specific tone, introduce key themes, or provide context.

The Hollow Men

A poem by T.S. Eliot that describes a desolate world of empty, defeated people living in a state of "living death" or spiritual paralysis following WWI.

Elegy

A poem of serious reflection, often serving as a lament for the dead.

Modern Elegy

A form of poetry where death must be formally recognized in language, often interacting with the impersonality of science and the ongoing liveliness of words.

Maya Angelou

An American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist who wrote the elegy "When Great Trees Fall" after the death of her friend James Baldwin.

Autothanatography

A genre where readers encounter the voices of those facing impending death as well as the grief of survivors struggling to come to terms with loss.

The Labour of Mourning

The difficult process of acceptance, moving on, and reconstructing identity in the face of grief and loss.

Decathexis

The process of mourning described as releasing the emotional tie between an individual and a lost person; according to some writers, it takes approximately two years.

Melancholia

A state identified when the mourning process or struggle with loss extends beyond a duration of two years.

Duhkha

A central Buddhist belief meaning "suffering," which aligns with the themes of impermanence and grief.

Impermanence

A central Buddhist belief that characterizes lives through constant change, teaching that the inevitability of death is part of the nature of reality.

Memento mori

A Latin phrase meaning "remember you must die," serving as a reflection on the brevity of life and the inevitability of death.

Memento amori

A Latin phrase meaning "remember love," used as a counterpart to memento mori to emphasize living with purpose.

Bill Whitehead

A Canadian writer and filmmaker who wrote "Good Grief," a non-fiction piece about his mourning process following the death of his partner Timothy "Tiff" Findley.