Romanticism and Subversive Suicide
Human Rights, Existential Freedom and Biopower
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:30th Apr '25
Should be back in stock very soon
Romanticism and Subversive Suicide: Human Rights, Existential Freedom and Biopower traces the roots and expression of the literary theme of subversive suicide in the British Romantic era through key texts from different genres, from novels to letters, and poems to plays. A range of commentaries on suicide – including newspaper reports, coroners’ inquests, religious tracts, sermons, medical studies, and legal texts – reveals the existence of a distinctly Romantic-era suicide debate, the fervour of which reflects the rise of biopower, as defined by Michel Foucault, to which suicide was the ultimate threat. This debate features a spirited defence of Enlightenment ideas proclaiming the Western liberal subject to be existentially free, as well as the broad cultural influence of the British slave trade, which shaped both national awareness of what it meant to be a subject and the definition of the human at the time
Michelle Faubert’s synthesis of Romanticist suicide discourse is both informed and elegant, and her foregrounding of abolitionist writing and the appropriation of its themes by women writers in the period bears an unmistakable relevance to present-day intersectional debates concerning human rights and social justice. -- Kelly McGuire, Trent University
Expanding on its pivotal account of slave suicide, Romanticism and Subversive Suicide explores how suicide can refuse versions of severe biopower – of forced life – imposed on women, and via Christianity, on all British subjects. Thanks to this approach, this well-researched, capacious study opens up an important new perspective on Romantic-era personhood. -- David Collings, Bowdoin College
Michelle Faubert’s thoroughly convincing readings of Romantic texts draw upon the contexts of slavery, gender and religion to demonstrate that subversive suicide was a defiant expression of personal autonomy in opposition to the constraints of biopolitics. I am dazzled by this innovative and important book, which is a pleasure to read. -- Lisa Vargo, University of Saskatchewan
ISBN: 9781399527538
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
296 pages