Who Is Afraid of the Big Grey Wolf?: Publicity and Theatricalisation of Death in 19th-Century Anglo-American Prose
Keywords:
Phenomenology of Death, Public Performance, Anglo-American Prose, Theatrical Act, Existential DreadAbstract
The article explores the representation of death as a public performance and a theatrical act in 19th-century Anglo-American prose. The study aims to demonstrate how individual existential dread is transformed into a collective spectacle and social reality. The theoretical and methodological framework is established through a brief genealogical overview of the cultural, historical, and religious archetypes of public death (Egyptian psychostasia, the Greek phenomenon of pharmakos), which is essential for decoding the examined literary spaces. The central focus of the research is placed on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. Through an in-depth narrative analysis of these texts, the paper argues that the scaffold, the ocean, and the wilderness function as specific theatrical stages for ultimate existential exposure, where physical absence is realised as an aestheticised public manifesto.
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