In this episode I take a solo flight to talk about death and its inevitability. Starting from the Princess Bride and Hamlet, we take a brief tour of the memento mori topos in Western literature from Homer and the Bible to Gerard Manley Hopkins and Robert Frost. 

Works Mentioned in the Episode:

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The Book of Common Prayer

The Iliad by Homer

The Odyssey by Homer

The Aeneid by Virgil

Confessions by Augustine

"The Wanderer" 

Beowulf

The Divine Comedy by Dante

The Dance of Death by Hans Holberlin the Younger

Everyman

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Devotions Upon Divergent Occasions by John Donne 

Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson

In Memoriam by Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost

"Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley Hopkins