Mors Viva: Literary Renderings of Life-to-Death Transitions

This essay examines a topos that was never formally named, but which recurs throughout literature as an imaginative way of drawing deathʹs sting. Calling it the mors viva motif, the author attempts to sort out its prefigurations and eventual embodiment. The topos depends upon the persistence of consciousness through the process of dying, and the sorts of experiences that might notionally occur in such a circumstance. Among the dramatic and fictional works in which it figures are Everyman, The Pilgrimʹs Progress, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’, Eustace and Hilda, Brunoʹs Dream, and A Matter of Life and Sex. The essay also includes a consideration of poems by Tennyson and Emily Dickinson.