Drew Daniel is associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Twenty Jazz Funk Greats and The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology of the English Renaissance.

• Introduction: Renaissance Self-FinishingChapter 1 Failed Seriousness in the Old Arcadia and GallatheaChapter 2 Slapstick and Synapothanumenon in Antony and CleopatraChapter 3 Trolling Decorum in Hamlet and Timon of AthensChapter 4 The Open Window in BiathanatosInterlude Inventing Suicide in Religio MediciChapter 5 A Cartoon about Suicide Prevention in Paradise LostChapter 6 Smiling at Daggers in Cato, a TragedyEpilogueAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

“The lucidity of Daniel’s razor-sharp prose is surpassed only by the boldness and sensitivity of his thought. Joy of the Worm resists the easy logic of secularization, whereby classical valorization and Christian condemnation of self-killing sequentially give way to a modern understanding of suicide as a cry for help. Instead, Daniel attunes us to materialist understandings and aesthetic representations of self-destruction in which cruelty and tenderness, sorrow and mirth, ugliness and beauty mingle conceptually and tonally. Daniel’s meticulous and humane readings attune us to a complex affective and social landscape surrounding suicide.”

Drew Daniel is associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Twenty Jazz Funk Greats and The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology of the English Renaissance.

• Introduction: Renaissance Self-FinishingChapter 1 Failed Seriousness in the Old Arcadia and GallatheaChapter 2 Slapstick and Synapothanumenon in Antony and CleopatraChapter 3 Trolling Decorum in Hamlet and Timon of AthensChapter 4 The Open Window in BiathanatosInterlude Inventing Suicide in Religio MediciChapter 5 A Cartoon about Suicide Prevention in Paradise LostChapter 6 Smiling at Daggers in Cato, a TragedyEpilogueAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

“The lucidity of Daniel’s razor-sharp prose is surpassed only by the boldness and sensitivity of his thought. Joy of the Worm resists the easy logic of secularization, whereby classical valorization and Christian condemnation of self-killing sequentially give way to a modern understanding of suicide as a cry for help. Instead, Daniel attunes us to materialist understandings and aesthetic representations of self-destruction in which cruelty and tenderness, sorrow and mirth, ugliness and beauty mingle conceptually and tonally. Daniel’s meticulous and humane readings attune us to a complex affective and social landscape surrounding suicide.”

Drew Daniel is associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Twenty Jazz Funk Greats and The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology of the English Renaissance.

• Introduction: Renaissance Self-FinishingChapter 1 Failed Seriousness in the Old Arcadia and GallatheaChapter 2 Slapstick and Synapothanumenon in Antony and CleopatraChapter 3 Trolling Decorum in Hamlet and Timon of AthensChapter 4 The Open Window in BiathanatosInterlude Inventing Suicide in Religio MediciChapter 5 A Cartoon about Suicide Prevention in Paradise LostChapter 6 Smiling at Daggers in Cato, a TragedyEpilogueAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

“The lucidity of Daniel’s razor-sharp prose is surpassed only by the boldness and sensitivity of his thought. Joy of the Worm resists the easy logic of secularization, whereby classical valorization and Christian condemnation of self-killing sequentially give way to a modern understanding of suicide as a cry for help. Instead, Daniel attunes us to materialist understandings and aesthetic representations of self-destruction in which cruelty and tenderness, sorrow and mirth, ugliness and beauty mingle conceptually and tonally. Daniel’s meticulous and humane readings attune us to a complex affective and social landscape surrounding suicide.”