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Mortality in Contemporary Literature
Rejoice: we who were born congenitally deaf are able to listen now to rank outsiders . . . since this morning it is with a vocabulary made wholesomely profane . . . that we endeavour each in his idiom to express the true magnalia. W. H. Auden

If we speak here of contemporary literature, let us nevertheless recall that in all ages men have recorded certain common re- sponses to death and mortality that vary little. The universal themes of dread and stupor, of grief and compunction, of tran- sience and corruptibility - such poignancies of our finite condi- tion underlie whatever special cultural or even religious influences come into play, or whatever particular hopes are projected. It is for this reason that elegies for fallen heroes and laments for toppled cities and broken hopes, in Job or Homer, are still moving, or the heartbreak in a papyrus letter, or the plangent grief of Catullus as he comes across many seas to his brother's grave, ut......

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Approximate Word Count: 6919
Approximate Pages: 28 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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