Power of Death

Maria-José Blanco is a Lecturer and Language teacher in the Department of Spanish Portuguese and Latin American Studies (SPLAS) at King’s College London. She is the author of Life-writing in Carmen Martín Gaite’s Cuadernos de todo and her Novels of the 1990s (2013), and the editor of a special issue of Journal of Romance Studies, “Airing the Private: Women’s Diaries in the Luso-Hispanic World” (2009) and the forthcoming Feminine Singular: Growing up through life-writing in the Luso-Hispanic World (2014).

“As well as for thanatology and death studies specialists, the book will be of even keener interest to those in the various areas touched on in the essays, offering an eye-opening introduction to an interdisciplinary approach in this fascinating field.” · Social Anthropology“The extraordinary impact of loss is discussed in a number of contexts including war and the complexities of dealing with that experience in a socially and culturally dynamic contemporary society. Contributors are drawn from a range of disciplines and international academic contexts, which makes for rich empirical fare…as well as covering socially important topics.” · Avril Maddrell, University of the West of England“The conceptual and methodological concerns contained within this collection are very wide ranging and… there is something for every reader who hails from an arts and humanities or social science background.” · Hannah Rumble, University of Bath

• List of IllustrationsNotes on ContributorsIntroductionRicarda Vidal and Maria-José BlancoPART I: DEATH IN SOCIETYChapter 1. Life Extension, Immortality and the Patient VoiceCatherine JenkinsChapter 2. Beyond ‘Mourning and Melancholia’Lynne M. SimpsonChapter 3. War and Requiem Compositions in the Twentieth CenturyWolfgang MarxPART II: DEATH IN LITERATUREChapter 4. Understanding Death/Writing Bereavement: The writer’s experienceMaria-José Blanco López de LermaChapter 5. A Way of Sorrows for the Twentieth Century: Margherita Guidacci’s LaVia Crucis dell’umanitàEleanor DavidChapter 6. From Self-Erasure to Self-Affirmation: Communally Acknowledged ‘Good Death’ in Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before DyingCorina CrisuChapter 7. Habeas Corpse. The Dead Body of Evidence in John Grisham’s The ClientFiorenzo IulianoChapter 8. The Fascination with Torture and Death in Twenty-first-Century Crime FictionRebecca ShillabeerPART III: DEATH IN VISUAL CULTUREChapter 9. The Power of Negative Creation – Why Art by Serial Killers SellsRicarda VidalChapter 10. Screening the Dying Individual: Film, Mortality and the Ethics of SpectatorshipJohn HorneChapter 11. The Broken Body as Spectacle: Looking at Death and Injury in SportJulia BanwellChapter 12. Death on Display: The Ideological Function of the Mummies of the World ExhibitDiana York BlainePART IV: CEMETERIES AND FUNERALSChapter 13. The Romanian Carnival of Death and the Merry Cemetery of  SăpânţaMarina Cap BunChapter 14. In the Dead of Night: a Nocturnal Exploration of Heterotopia in the GraveyardBel DeeringChapter 15. Scenarios of Death in Contexts of Mobility: Guineans and Bangladeshis in LisbonClara Saraiva and José MaprilChapter 16. Karaoke Death: Intertextuality in Active Euthanasia PracticesNatasha LushetichPART V: PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON DEATHChapter 17. Death isn't what it used to beLala IslaChapter 18. The Dad ProjectBriony CampbellIndex