Suffering in Anglophone Literatures

Book excerpt: Suffering in Anglophone Literatures engages with postclassical Trauma Studies and opens the traumatic envelope to embrace concepts such as toleration, mourning, nostalgia, vulnerability and existential Angst. The first section explores insomnia in Shakespeare, testimonial suffering in Richardson, nostalgia in Clare, work as a form of suffering in Tennyson and pleasurable suffering in Trollope. The second section deals with suffering as expressed in blues (by August Wilson), intergenerational healing (by Rosanna Deerchild), systemic pain in war fiction (from World War One to the Vietnam War), personal and historical nostalgia (by John Banville) and literary non-commitment to suffering (by Joyce, and Philip Kerr). The final section turns to more recent literary texts ranging from the poetry of Derek Mahon, Philip Metres and Solmaz Sharif to novels on intergenerational trauma (by Kate Morton), the sexual abuse of women (by Miriam Toews) and growing up in poverty (by Douglas Stuart).