Death in History, Culture, and Society – serie

Death and grief have often elicited the response of creativity, from elegies and requiems to memorial architecture. Such artistic expressions of grief form the focus of Grief, Identity, and the Arts, which brings together scholars from the disciplines of musicology, literature, sociology, film studies, social work, and museum studies. While presenting one or more case studies from a range of artistic disciplines, historical periods, or geographical areas, each chapter addresses the interdependence of grief and identity in the arts. The volume as a whole shows how artistic expressions of grief are both influenced by and contribute to constructions of religious, national, familial, social, and artistic identities. Contributors to this volume: Tammy Clewell, Lizet Duyvendak, David Gist, Maryam Haiawi, Owen Hansen, Maggie Jackson, Christoph Jedan, Bram Lambrecht, Carlo Leo, Wolfgang Marx, Tijl Nuyts, Despoina Papastathi, Julia Płaczkiewicz, Bavjola Shatro, Caroline Supply, Nicolette van den Bogerd, Eric Venbrux, Janneke Weijermars, Miriam Wendling, and Mariske Westendorp.

In premodern Europe, the gender identity of those waiting for Doomsday in their tombs could be reaffirmed, readjusted, or even neutralized. Testimonies of this renegotiation of gender at the encounter with death is detectable in wills, letters envisioning oneself as dead, literary narratives, provisions for burial and memorialization, the laws for the disposal of those executed for heinous crimes and the treatment of human remains as relics.