Consolatory literature and suicide prevention in early modern england

Content warning: discussion of suicide will feature prominently in this seminar, attendee discretion is advised.

This event takes place in-person and online. For those joining us in the Centre for Cultures and Envinronments of Health Boardroom there will be Tea and Coffee provided after the seminar

Seminar Abstract

The 1637 publication of John Sym’s Lifes Preservative Against Self-Killing marked the first of an emerging genre of English language texts devoted to the subject of suicide. Scholars of suicide have used such texts to illustrate early modern society’s condemnatory attitude towards the ‘heinous sin’ of self-M**der, while the few psychiatric histories which acknowledge them champion works like Sym’s as pioneers of an enlightened psychotherapy. Assessments of this literature are thus split into two opposing camps, one which privileges religious condemnation of suicide, and the other which seeks to identify emergent psychiatric practices. This paper highlights the value of suicide texts, which in many cases fall within a wider genre of ‘consolatory literature’, for understanding early modern ideas about suicide prevention. I suggest that, rather than wholly intended to condemn, works like Sym’s drew on contemporary religious and medical frameworks to offer pragmatic interventions for use by the suicidal and those around them to prevent self-inflicted death.

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Host or Publisher Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health