Historiographical reviews. Suicide in early modern and modern Europe

Historical Journal

Volumn 49, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 903-919

  Healy, Róisín ^a  

^a NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND   (Ireland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

MODERNIZATION; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT; SOCIAL IMPACT; SUICIDE;

EURASIA; EUROPE;

EID: 33748334297     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X06005577     Document Type: Review

References (114)

1. Ursula Baumann, Vom Recht auf den eigenen Tod: Die Geschichte des Suizids vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Weimar, 2001), pp. v and 1.
2. Vera Lind received a similar reaction from the same audience, although she acknowledged some sympathy, alongside surprise, suspicion, and cynicism, for the topic, Vera Lind, Selbstmord in der frühen Neuzeit: Diskurs, Lebenswelt und kultureller Wandel am Beispiel der Herzogtümer Schleswig und Holstein (Göttingen, 1999), p. 7.
3. For instance, 'Suicide reaching epidemic proportions, says coroner', Irish Times, 26 Apr. 2005, p. 1.
4. See, for instance, the collection of 300 brief biographies of famous suicides contained in Gerald Grote, Michael Völkel, and Karsten Weyershausen, eds., Das Lexikon der prominenten Selbstmörder (Berlin, 2000),
5. and an anthology of texts dealing with suicide, including some suicide notes, in Roger Willemsen, ed., Der Selbstmord: Briefe, Manifeste, literarische Texte (Cologne, 2002).
6. A recent medical approach to suicide that several historians have found useful is Howard Kushner, American suicide: A psycho-cultural exploration (New Brunswick and London, 1991).
7. Philippe Ariès, The hour of our death (Oxford, 1981, orig. Paris, 1977).
8. The same is true of other works on death around the same time: Michel Vovelle, La mort et l'occident: De 1200 à nos jours (Paris, 1983)
9. François Lebrun, Les hommes et la mort en Anjou aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1971)
10. Pierre Chaunu, La mort à Paris: XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1977)
11. John McManners, Death and the Enlightenment: Changing attitudes to death among Christians and unbelievers in eighteenth-century France (Oxford, 1981).
12. Richard Cobb, Death in Paris: The records of the Basse-Geoêle de la Seine, October 1795-September 1801, Vendémiaire Year IV-Fructidor Year IX (Oxford, 1978), p. 101.
13. Olive Anderson, Suicide in Victorian and Edwardian England (Oxford, 1987), p. 425.
14. That said, a handful of older historical works proved useful to some of Anderson's cohort: Albert Bayet, Le suicide et la morale (Paris, 1922)
15. Louis Dublin, To be or not to be (New York, 1933)
16. Henry Romilly Fedden, Suicide: A social and historical study (New York, 1938)
17. Lester Crocker, 'The discussion of suicide in the eighteenth century', Journal of the History of Ideas, 13 (1952), pp. 47-72.
18. Not mentioned by Anderson, but published earlier were Markus Schär, Seelennöte der Untertanen: Selbstmord, Melancholie und Religion im alten Zürich, 1500-1800 (Zurich, 1985)
19. and a study by an Americanist, Roger Lane, Violent death in the city: suicide, accident, and murder in nineteenth-century Philadelphia (Cambridge, MA, 1979).
20. Those that followed included Barbara T. Gates, Victorian suicide: Mad crimes and sad histories (Princeton, 1988)
21. Jeffrey Merrick, 'Patterns and prosecution of suicide in eighteenth-century Paris', Historical Reflexions, 16 (1989), pp. 1-53
22. and Dorinda Outram, The body and the French Revolution (New Haven and London, 1989), pp. 68-105.
23. Michael MacDonald and Terence R. Murphy, Sleepless souls: Suicide in early modern England (Oxford, 1990).
24. Patrice Higonnet, 'Du suicide sentimental au suicide politique', in Elisabeth Liris and Jean-Maurice Bizière, eds., La révolution et la mort (Toulouse, 1991), pp. 137-50,
25. and by the same author, 'Joint suicide in eighteenth-century French literature and revolutionary politics', in Bernadette Fort, ed., Fictions of the French Revolution (Evanston, IL, 1991), pp. 87-110
26. Gabriele Signori, ed. Trauer, Verzweiflung und Anfechtung: Selbstmord und Selbstmordversuch in mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Gesellschaften (Forum Psychohistorie, ed., Hedwig Röckelein, vol. III) (Tübingen, 1994)
27. Georges Minois, Histoire du suicide: La société occidentale face à la mort volontaire (Paris, 1995), which was translated into German in 1996 and into English three years later with the title, History of suicide: Voluntary death in western culture (Baltimore and London, 1999).
28. George Simpson, ed., Emile Durkheim, Suicide (London and New York, 2002).
29. Jack Douglas, The social meanings of suicide (Princeton, 1967).
30. Anderson, Suicide in England, pp. 13-14.
31. Donna T. Andrew, 'Debate: The secularization of suicide in England, 1660-1800', Past and Present, 119 (1988), pp. 158-65. This was a response to Michael MacDonald's article of the same title in volume 111 (1986) and was followed by his reply.
32. Alexander Murray, Suicide in the middle ages, I: The violent against themselves (Oxford, 1999),
33. and II: The curse on self-murder (Oxford, 2000).
34. Vol. III, The map of mental desolation, has not yet appeared.
35. On the same period, see Arno Borst et al., eds., Tod im Mittelalter (Constance, 1993).
36. Murray, Curse on self-murder, pp. 398-405.
37. Minois, History of suicide.
38. Lind, Selbstmord
39. Andreas Bähr, Der Richter im Ich: Die Semantik der Selbsttötung in der Aufklärung (Göttingen, 2002)
40. Jeffrey R. Watt, Choosing death: Suicide and Calvinism in early modern Geneva (Kirksville, MS, 2001)
41. and idem, ed., From sin to insanity: Suicide in early modern Europe (Ithaca, 2004)
42. Baumann, Recht auf den eigenen Tod
43. Zilla Gabrielle Cahn, Suicide in French thought from Montesquieu to Cioran (New York, 1998).
44. Susan Morrissey, 'Drinking to death: Vodka, suicide, and religious burial in Russia', Past and Present, 186 (2005), p. 145.
45. For discussion of laws on suicide, see Lind, Selbstmord, pp. 31-9.
46. Machiel Bosman, 'The judicial treatment of suicide in Amsterdam', in Watt, ed., Sin to insanity, p. 20
47. Watt, Choosing death, p. 92,
48. and on Calvin's views, pp. 67-76.
49. See also Erik Midelfort, 'Selbstmord im Urteil von Reformation und Gegenreformation', in Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling, eds., Die katholische Konfessionalisierung (Gütersloh, 1995), pp. 296-310.
50. Paul S. Seaver, 'Suicide and the vicar general in London: A mystery solved?', in Watt, ed., Sin to insanity, pp. 25-47.
51. Lind, Selbstmord, p. 413.
52. For early modern Germany, see also David Lederer, 'The dishonourable dead: Elite and popular perceptions of suicide in early modern Germany', in Sibylle Backmann et al., eds., Das Konzept der Ehre in der Frühen Neuzeit (Augsburg, 1997), pp. 347-63.
53. Minois, History of suicide, pp. 116-47.
54. Lind, Selbstmord, pp. 97-112.
55. On Moses Mendelsohn, see Baumann, Recht auf den eigenen Tod, p. 55
56. for a brief comment on Jewish, Christian, and Islamic attitudes, see Elizabeth G. Dickenson and James M. Boyden, 'Ambivalence toward suicide in golden age Spain', in Watt, ed., Sin to insanity, pp. 100-15.
57. Other suicides considered in Bähr, Richter im ich, are Christian Friedrich Illing, Gotthold Friedrich Stäudlin, Clooβ. An earlier treatment of Jerusalem can be found in Roger Paulin, Der Fall Jersualem: Zum Selbstmordproblem zwischen Aufklärung und Empfindsamkeit (Eine kleine Geschichte der Aufklärung) (Göttingen, 1999).
58. Also on melancholy, see David Lederer, 'Melancholie und andere Krankheiten des Geistes: Plädoyer für eine Geschichte der frühmodernen Seelenarznei', in Reiner Jehl and Wolfgang Weber, eds., Melancholie - Krankheit oder Lebenskunst? (Sigmaringen, 2000), pp. 17-32.
59. Cahn, Suicide in French thought, p. 109.
60. David Hume, Essays on suicide and the immortality of the soul (London, 1783).
61. Lind, Selbstmord, p. 59
62. and on Möser, pp. 65-6.
63. Baumann, Recht auf den eigenen Tod, pp. 133-4.
64. On transmission of popular opinion to the elite, see the study of Geneva, an important Enlightenment centre, Watt, Choosing death.
65. Arne Jansson, 'Suicidal murders in Stockholm', in Watt, ed., Sin to insanity, pp. 81-99.
66. See also his larger study, From swords to sorrow: Homicide and suicide in early modern Stockholm (Stockholm, 1998).
67. Jansson, 'Suicidal murders', p. 89
68. Baumann, Recht auf den eigenen Tod, pp. 76-9.
69. Cahn, Suicide in French thought, p. 10
70. Murray, Curse on self-murder, pp. 86-121.
71. Lind, Selbstmord, pp. 334-6.
72. Outram, Body and the French Revolution, pp. 90-105.
73. Cahn, Suicide in French thought, p. 142.
74. Watt, Choosing death, pp. 228-9.
75. Lind, Selbstmord, pp. 128-30.
76. Outram, Body and the French revolution, pp. 85-7.
77. For a literary perspective on gender and suicide see Margaret Higonnet, 'Speaking silences: Women's suicide', in Susan Ribin Suleiman, ed., The female body in western culture: Contemporary perspectives (Cambridge, MA, 1986), pp. 68-83.
78. Lind, Selbstmord, p. 331.
79. Murray, Violent against themselves, pp. 368-78.
80. Jeffrey Merrick, 'Suicide in Paris', in Watt, ed., Sin to insanity, pp. 158-69.
81. Watt, Choosing death, pp. 263-4.
82. Durkheim, Suicide, pp. 201-39.
83. Watt, Choosing death, pp. 166-86.
84. Ibid., pp. 6 and 66.
85. Irina Paperno, Suicide as a cultural institution in Dostoevsky's Russia (Ithaca, 1997), pp. 57-8.
86. On the legal penalties, see Anderson, Suicide in England, pp. 263-311.
87. Machiel Bosman has shown, for instance, that Cesare Beccaria's call for decriminalization in 1764 came long after legal penalties for suicide were widely disregarded, Bosman, 'Judicial treatment of suicides', p. 24.
88. Baumann, Recht auf den eigenen Tod, pp. 19 and 31.
89. Morrissey, 'Drinking to death'.
90. Victor Bailey, 'This rash act': Suicide across the life cycle in the Victorian city (Stanford, 1998).
91. Ibid., pp. 43 and 60-84.
92. Ibid., pp. 201 and 229-30.
93. Cahn, Suicide in French thought, p. 228.
94. Baumann, Recht auf den eigenen Tod, pp. 241-2 and 268-70.
95. Ibid., pp. 227 and 264.
96. Paperno, Dostoevsky's Russia, pp. 82 and 101.
97. Ty Geltmaker, Tired of living: Suicide in Italy from national unification to World War I, 1860-1915 (New York, 2002).
98. The original title was Il suicidio: Saggio di statistica morale comparata (Milan, 1878).
99. He also wrote Le leggi staistiche del suicidio (Milan, 1885).
100. Geltmaker, Tired of living, pp. 17-29.
101. Ibid., p. 39.
102. Ibid., p. 90.
103. Murray, Violent against themselves, pp. 359-62.
104. David Lederer, 'Honfibú: Nationhood, manhood, and the culture of self-sacrifice in Hungary', in Watt, ed., Sin to insanity, pp. 116-37.
105. For a chronology of suicide prevention, see Fred Cutter, Art and the wish to die (Chicago, 1983), pp. 54-8.
106. Baumann, Recht auf den eigenen Tod, pp. 44 and 85.
107. Susan Morrissey, 'Patriarchy on trial: Suicide, discipline and governance in Imperial Russia', Journal of Modern History, 75 (2003), pp. 23-58, at p. 28.
108. See also by the same author, 'In the name of freedom: Autocracy, serfdom, and suicide in Russia', Slavonic and East European Review, 82 (2004), pp. 268-91.
109. Kenneth Pinnow, 'Violence against the collective self and the problem of social integration in early Bolshevik Russia', Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4 (2003), pp. 653-77.
110. Two articles by Goeschel appeared too late for consideration in this review: 'Suicide at the end of the Third Reich', Journal of Contemporary History, 41 (2006), pp. 153-73
111. and 'Methodische Überlegungen zur Geschichte der Selbsttötung im Nationalsozialismus', in Andreas Bahr and Hans Medick, eds., Sterben von eigener Hand: Selbsttötung als kulturelle Praxis (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2005), pp. 169-90.
112. Baumann, Recht auf den eigenen Tod, pp. 275-6.
113. There is no history of suicide in Ireland, although Mark Finnane discusses it briefly in a section on 'mania and melancholia' in Insanity and the insane in post-famine Ireland (London, 1981), pp. 50-61
114. and in connection with violence generally in 'A decline in violence in Ireland? Crime, policing and social relations, 1860-1914', Crime, Histoires et Sociétés, 1 (1997), pp. 51-70.