Drew Daniel, "Joy of the Worm: Suicide and Pleasure in Early Modern English Literature" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

The University of Chicago Press Podcast · Jul 6, 2022 · 1h 4m

Advisory: this episode discusses the literary representation of self-harm and suicide, in particular, how writers such as Shakespeare and Milton often treated the subject in unserious or trivializing ways.

In 1643, the writer Thomas Browne introduced the word “suicide” into the English language. Eventually, “suicide” would become a monolith in how we think about self-harm and self-killing. “Suicide” has come to represent an individualizing, pathologizing way of looking at people who contemplate ending their lives. But, when Thomas Browne’s new word was first used, it was entering a discursive…