Publisher's Synopsis
What is melancholy? Recent critics have offered two types of answers: melancholy is either a personal pathology to be studied in the light of psychoanalysis or a class-based disease to be viewed in the light of history. Chateaubriand's multi-volume autobiography, "Memoires d'Outre-tombe" was written by an aristocrat displaced by the French Revolution and personally, even genetically, predisposed to melancholia. Speaking from beyond the grave, Chateaubriand is haunted by tombs and the liminal space between life and death.
