Suicide in Modern Literature

Josefa Ros Velasco is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Complutense University of Madrid, Spain (2019–2021). Prior to this, she was a Teaching Assistant and a Postdoctoral Researcher at Harvard University (2017–2019). She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy with International Mention (2017, Complutense University of Madrid) with Extraordinary Doctorate Award, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Education. She is the president of the International Society of Boredom Studies.She is the author of many academic papers such as “Hans Blumenberg’s Philosophical Anthropology of Boredom” (Karl Alber, 2018), “Boredom: humanising or dehumanising treatment” (Vernon, 2018); or “Boredom: A Comprehensive Study of the State of Affairs” (Thémata, 2017). She is also the editor of the books Boredom is In Your Mind. A Shared Psychological-Philosophical Approach (Springer, 2019); The Culture of Boredom (Brill, 2020); The Faces of Depression in Literature (Peter Lang, 2020); andLa enfermedad del aburrimiento (forthcoming, 2021).

• Chapter 1. Introduction. Psychology, Suicide, and Literature.- Chapter 2. Suicide and the Interpretation of Modernity: Edith Wharton’s Early Fictions.- Chapter 3. Suicide Across the Waves: On the Feminist Possibilities of Dramatic Suicide in Plays by Susan Glaspell, Marsha Norman, and Naomi Wallace.- Chapter 4. The Gendering of Suicidal Agency in Jeffrey Eugenide’s The Virgin Suicides.- Chapter 5. Magic Friend, Beggar Maid and The Fair Princess, Method Actress and Loving Mother: Fantasies of Love, Loss, and Desire in Joyce Carole Oates’ Fictional Account of Norma Jeane’s Reality.- Chapter 6. Suicide Is Not for the Poor: Self-death in Veristi Authors, Luigi Capuana, and Giovanni Verga.- Chapter 7. Irony, Suicide, and Social Criticism in Margarita Nelken’s Short Novel: Mi suicidio (1924).- Chapter 8. The True Life in the False One (Das wahre Leben im falschen). Suicide Attempts of Literary Heroes in Eastern German Literature.- Chapter 9. The Life of Others. Marx and Durkheim on Suicide and Social Good(s).- Chapter 10. Desire of Death, Suicide, and Salvation: Problems with Eternity in Miguel de Unamuno.- Chapter 11. “The End of the World? Let Me Die.” Guido Morselli’s Dissipatio H. G. between Suicide and Mankind’s Dissolution.- Chapter 12. The Existential and Suicidal Crisis in the Work of Walker Percy.- Chapter 13. What Darkness Reveals: A Look at Depression and Suicide in the Works of William Styron.- Chapter 14. Ecological Metaphors: Suicide Versus Life in Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die.- Chapter 15. Intertextuality and the Opposition to Suicide and Assisted Suicide in the Netherlands – The Case of Joost Zwagerman.- Chapter 16. Suicide in Contemporary Young Adult Novels.- Chapter 17. ‘Our Precarious Selves’: Suicide and Autoimmunity in Yiyun Li.- Chapter 18. Epilogue. Leaving One’s Comfort Zone in the Classroom.