Joy of the Worm: Suicide and Pleasure in Early Modern English Literature

Consulting an extensive archive of early modern literature, Joy of the Worm asserts that voluntary death in literature is not always a matter of tragedy.

In this study, Drew Daniel identifies a surprisingly common aesthetic attitude that he calls “joy of the worm,” after Cleopatra’s embrace of the deadly asp in Shakespeare’s play—a pattern where voluntary death is imagined as an occasion for humor, mirth, ecstatic pleasure, even joy and celebration.

Daniel draws both a historical and a co...