“Thanatographies and the Modes of Literary Mourning”

Contact : me@janmusil.net 

Research Area 2 

In my research at the Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Charles University, I am looking at autobiographical narratives concerned with the death of a close person and mourning, which I call thanatographies. 

In the contexts of claims that death had been made into a taboo during the 20th century (Ariès, Becker, Ohler, Jankélévitch, etc.), I understand thanatographies, emerging mainly in the second half of the period, as counter-narratives that treat death in its different forms, such as death of the other, grief, fear of own death, processes of dying, hospitalization, suicide, etc. in a sensitive and complex manner. If the norm is death that is on the one hand inexpressible or radically Other, or, on the other hand, aesthesized, objectified and medicalized, then the transgression is death, dying and grief as a subjective experience, communicated through writing, which is aware of its own performative nature (de Man) and seeks a sense of agency in the grieving process (Blumenberg). I am mainly interested in how mourning is staged using literary means, and I offer alternatives to the widespread Freudian reading of grief writing (not just thanatographies, but elegies and other commemorative genres, too) as work of mourning. 

Although the nature of my subject requires me to draw comparisons with works from other literatures too, my main focus is the lively thanatographical tradition of Central Europe, including writers from the Czech Republic (Bohumila Grögerová), Slovakia (Ján Rozner), Austria (Peter Handke, Friederike Mayröcker, Josef Winkler), Germany (Peter Weiss), Poland (Mira Marcinów, Marcin Wicha), and Hungary (Péter Esterházy), who are aware of the tradition they cocreate. 

CV 

Academic Training and Research Stays 

• 2024: Trainee in Good Death project, Erasmus+, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom 
• 2023: Jan Patočka Fellow at Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, Austria 
• 2021-: PhD researcher at the Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Charles University 
• 2019-2021: Master’s Degree in Comparative literature, Charles University 
• 2020: German Studies, Erasmus+, Leipzig Universität, Germany 

 Selected publications 

• Thanatografie: vyprávění o lásce, smrti a smutku. [Thanatographies: Narratives of Love, Death, and Mourning] Slovo a smysl / Word & Sense. 2024 (21) 45. (To be published.) 
• Zaříkávání nemoci. [Enchanting Illness: Pathographies, or writing about Illness.] Interview with León-Villagrá, Diego. Conducted by Jan Musil. In PLAV: měsíčník pro světovou literaturu. 2023, XIX(1), s. 46–49. ISSN 1803-6635. 
• ‘Britský sen o imigrantech: kolonizační ideologie v seriálu Mind Your Language’ [Colonial Ideologies in The Sitcom Mind Your Language] In: Sémiotika a ideologie. Praha: Togga, 2022. 
• Thanatografie: opisovat hranici života a smrt. [Thanatography and Liminality] Flux. 2022, II(1), s. 48–52. ISSN 2787-947X. 

Conference papers (selected) 

• „What We Tell Our Children About Death. The Concept of Death in Children’s Literature.“ Literature and Society Colloquium. 16 May 2024. Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. 
• „Life Is Not a Sausage and Death Is Not the End of It.“ Autumn Fellow’s Conference. 29 November 2023. Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, Austria. 
• „Thanatographies in the Context of Trauma Writing.“ Trauma and Literature. 22-23 September 2023. Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. 
•  „The Violence of Tradition in David Harsent’s Poetry. Ballads and Legends as Neighbours of Thanatographies.“ Poetry. Experience. Attention. The International Network for the Study of Lyric. 6-8 June 2023. Oslo University, Norway. https://www.hf.uio.no/iln/english/research/groups/poetry/events/poetry-experience-attention/ 

Teaching 

• 2022: Comparative Literature seminar Thanatography: Literature and Death, Univerzita Karlova