Imagining Suicide

Imagining Suicide: Representation and Emotion in the Eighteenth-Century

This paper will outline Parisot's current study of representations of suicide in British fiction, drama and newspapers of the late eighteenth century, and how the varied and often conflicting public emotions they elicited and circulated helped to shape new conceptions of "suicide". Drawing from case studies that reveal particular sets of emotional processes through representation, response, and counter-response, the paper will highlight the study's emphasis on two agents of change often undervalued by histories of suicide - public emotions and the literary imagination - as well help to historicise the modern relation between suicide and media.

Presenter

Dr Eric Parisot

Eric Parisot is a Senior Lecturer in English at Flinders University, and a Research Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Adelaide node). His primary interests lie in the literature and culture of the British long eighteenth century, particularly the subjects of death, suicide, the afterlife, the Gothic, and the history of emotions. Research from his current project feature in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Literature Compass and the Huntington Library Quarterly. He is also the author of Graveyard Poetry (Ashgate, 2013).