The Dead Cannot Reply (Hardcover)

Dr. or Prof. Aaron Botwick

ISBN 13: 9798765128817

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, New York, 2026

About this Item

Hardcover. An intellectual and literary history of the professionalization of suicidology at the turn of the 20th century which shows that fiction played a significant role in the transformation of the debates on voluntary death.In 19th-century England, the main point of contention around suicide was the punishment. Should self-murderers still be staked through the heart? Should the crown continue to seize their assets? In the 20th century, the questions shifted to motives: Why does someone commit suicide? What does it feel like to be suicidal? And can these questions, asked about a subject who is no longer present, be answered without their testimony? As The Dead Cannot Reply shows, the emphasis shifted from effects to causes.Fiction, unbound by factual truth, offers an ideal space for these debates. Nicholas Nickleby, Jane Eyre, and Daniel Deronda illustrate the 19th-century understanding of suicide as a public event whose meaning is located in its meaning for others. The Man of Property and The Good Soldier confront the limits of our understanding on the subject. Mrs. Dalloway imagines what it feels like to take the leap, and Golden Age detective fiction, like Emile Durkheim and his contemporaries, finds the answer to suicide in the suicidal type. Meanwhile, D.H. Lawrence, like Sigmund Freud, identifies a self-destructive urge, or a death drive, in modern man.The Dead Cannot Reply combines close readings of major Victorian and modernist novels alongside popular and scientific texts on suicide to examine how questions of teleology, causality, and phenomenology were answered in the English imagination. Argues that the professionalization of suicidology in the 20th century shifted the focus of suicide discourse from its effects to its causes and illustrates the influence of this shift on English literature. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9798765128817

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Dead Cannot Reply (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, New York
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798765128817
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

An intellectual and literary history of the professionalization of suicidology at the turn of the 20th century which shows that fiction played a significant role in the transformation of the debates on voluntary death. In 19th-century England, the main point of contention around suicide was the punishment. Should “self-murderers” still be staked through the heart? Should the crown continue to seize their assets? In the 20th century, the questions shifted to motives: Why does someone commit suicide? What does it feel like to be suicidal? And can these questions, asked about a subject who is no longer present, be answered without their testimony? As The Dead Cannot Reply shows, the emphasis shifted from effects to causes. Fiction, unbound by factual truth, offers an ideal space for these debates. Nicholas Nickleby, Jane Eyre, and Daniel Deronda illustrate the 19th-century understanding of suicide as a public event whose meaning is located in its meaning for others. The Man of Property and The Good Soldier confront the limits of our understanding on the subject. Mrs. Dalloway imagines what it feels like to take the leap, and Golden Age detective fiction, like Émile Durkheim and his contemporaries, finds the answer to suicide in the suicidal “type.” Meanwhile, D.H. Lawrence, like Sigmund Freud, identifies a self-destructive urge, or a death drive, in modern man. The Dead Cannot Reply combines close readings of major Victorian and modernist novels alongside popular and scientific texts on suicide to examine how questions of teleology, causality, and phenomenology were answered in the English imagination.

About the Author

Aaron Botwick is an Assistant Professor of English at Hostos Community College, City University of New York, USA. His work has been published in The D.H. Lawrence Review, The Harold Pinter Review, and Nabokov Studies.