Continuing Bonds with the Dead

Description:

Harold K. Bush's 'Continuing bonds with the dead' examines the profound transfiguration that the death of a child wrought on the literary work of nineteenth-century American writers. Taking as his subjects Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and W. E. B. Du Bois, Bush demonstrates how the death of a child became the defining "before-and-after moment" in their lives as adults and as artists. In narrating their struggles, Bush maps the intense field of creative energy induced by revrberating waves of parental grief, and larger nineteenth-century culture of morality and grieving.

subjects: American literature, history and criticism, 19th century,  Death in literature,  Children, death,  Authors, american,  Death, psychological aspects,  Death, social aspects,  Parental grief,  Death,  Psychology,  History and criticism,  American literature,  American Authors,  Bereavement in literature,  Children,  History,  Psychological aspects,  Social aspects