Death and literature: Different approaches, from simplicity to obscurity

Authors

  • John Skelton University of Birmingham (United Kingdom)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.8.10567

Keywords:

death, literature, medical humanities, grief, approaches to dying

Abstract

This study looks briefly at a range of ways in which writers have approached the concept of death, from expressions of personal grief, through to the ways in which attitudes to death represented in a culture are also picked up and used by writers from the culture concerned. Writers considered are mostly (but not all) from the English and Spanish language traditions, and in particular Seamus Heaney, Thomas Hardy, Miguel de Cervantes and Federico García Lorca. The point is made that not all writing about death is centred on death as a source of personal grief, though a great deal is. Also considered is the way in which some writing about death is transparent, and in a sense overtly simple, while other writing is less so, and may even seem obscure.

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Author Biography

John Skelton, University of Birmingham (United Kingdom)

Professor of Clinical Communication at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom), and Head of Education Quality at the College of Medical and Dental Sciences. He has published more than one hundred academic papers on aspects of clinical communication, medical education, medical humanities and applied linguistics. He is the author of  Language and clinical communication: this bright Babylon  and  Role-play and clinical communication  (both in Radcliffe Medical Press, 2008), and is one of the very few non-Clinicians to be awarded Honorary Fellowship of the UK Royal College of General Practitioners.

References

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Published

2018-06-05

How to Cite

Skelton, J. (2018). Death and literature: Different approaches, from simplicity to obscurity. Metode Science Studies Journal, (8), 247–253. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.8.10567
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Issue

Making science: A multitude of perspectives (2018)

Section

Narrating health. Literature and medicine

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