Response to Death: The Literary Work of Mourning

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta. He is
the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

Mourning is a theme that is pervasive in literary discussions nowadays.
The topic is fashionable but not at all trivial, perhaps because AIDS
memoirs have increased awareness of the role of grief in literature.
Editor Christian Riegel has compiled a fine collection of essays on the
treatment of mourning in works ranging from the York cycle of medieval
plays to 16th-century French lyrics to contemporary American and
Canadian poetry. Each article is documented on its own, and a lengthy
bibliography will be useful for scholars. A few of the essays will be
interesting only to specialists, but most of them have a wider scope,
such as the discussions of Sylvia Plath and John Berryman by Ernest
Smith and the study of mourning in the works of postcolonial writers
Janet Frame, Sara Suleri, and Arundhati Roy. The treatment of works by
the Canadian poet Lola Lemire Tostevin by Thomas M. Gerry and the essay
on Paul Monette’s AIDS elegy are worth the price of the volume. The
editor’s discussion of “the literary work of mourning” in the
introduction is insightful, if a little brief.