In this episode I take a solo flight to talk about death and its inevitability. Starting from the Princess Bride and Hamlet, we take a brief tour of the memento mori topos in Western literature from Homer and the Bible to Gerard Manley Hopkins and Robert Frost.
Works Mentioned in the Episode:
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Iliad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
The Aeneid by Virgil
Confessions by Augustine
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Dance of Death by Hans Holberlin the Younger
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Devotions Upon Divergent Occasions by John Donne
Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson
In Memoriam by Alfred Lord Tennyson
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost
"Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley Hopkins