Suicide in Literature

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So this is not the suicide per se which is valued by the novelists and the poets, it is more the reasons behind the suicide. In the Ancient Roman world, under patriotism, heroism, honor or other virtues, the main reason to depict suicide was to celebrate the greatness of Rome. The literature has to be edifying and the suicide should be an exemplum, an exhaltation of the noble virtues. The political power used the literature to spread its ideas of greatness and self-sacrifice, in accordance to the stoicism. The particular situation of the Greek tragedy Antigone appears clearly, and could be a more modern form of suicide than those usually praised in the Ancient literature of Rome and Athenes. Nonetheless, the fact those societies did not considered suicide as a sin (contrary to the catholic religion) greatly influenced the content of the literary works of this era.

Antiquity and the idea of self-sacrifice out of love, desperate feelings or unsatisfying existence seem to be foreign. This conception is rather modern and mainly finds its roots in the Romantic Era, an intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe. It is useful to see the origine of this movement in the German Sturm und Drang (« Storm and Urge »), which proposes an artistic vision opposed to the rational congruity of the Enlightenment. The authors wanted to give violent expressions to extreme emotions, sensibility and subjectivity, and echoed the social upheavals in America and in Europe's societies . Knowledge, science and rationalism were the key values of the Age of Enlightenment, as a reaction romantic thinkers praised imagination, irrationalism and intuition.