Marie Andy, don't know how to pronounce it but it's the art of dying. It referred to a genre of literature that started in the early 1400s and really circulated widely throughout the West until the early 1900s. For more than 500 years this was in Vogue. And part of the reason is because during the mid 14th century bubonic plague outbreak in Western Europe the social authorities were either skipped or could not be found right when people died.