The Final Crossing
Death and Dying in Literature
Series:
Edited By John J. Han and Clark C. Triplett
Introduction
Extract
JOHN J. HAN AND C. CLARK TRIPLETT
Death and dying is an important area of study in a variety of disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, gerontology, medical ethics, healthcare science, health law, and literary studies. One of the modern pioneers in thanatology was Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004), a Swiss-American psychiatrist whose book On Death and Dying (1969) famously presented the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). Her model is now challenged, most notably in Ruth Davis Konigsberg’s The Truth about Grief: The Myth of Its Five Stages and the New Science of Loss (2011), yet Kübler-Ross’s book was a seminal work that revolutionized the way we view the process of dying and bereavement.
The year 1970 saw the publication of two important journals on death and dying, Death Studies and OMEGA: Journal of Death and Dying, both of which are still published. In the same year, Hannelore Wass (1926–2013), a German-American scholar, began to teach death and dying at the University of Florida. These days, almost all colleges, universities, and seminaries offer the course. The Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC), which evolved from the Forum for Death Education and Counseling, also meets on an annual basis.
However, the issue of death and dying is as old as human history. Throughout the history of world literature, writers and poets have grappled with the issue of human death and dying. Texts from ancient...
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