Mourning Lions and Penelope’s Revenge

[Loss and mourning].

The human being needs ties to grow and develop. When some of these ties are broken a period of great intensity arises that we call mourning. If the loss is radical and definitive, as in the case of death, all of the person's dimensions are affected (the physical, emotional, cognitive, behavioural, social and spiritual dimensions), to such an extent that the person can feel unable to overcome th...

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" shows many features associated with seventeenth-century metaphysical poetry in general, and with Donne's work in particular. Donne's contemporary, the English writer Izaak Walton, tells us the poem dates from 1611, when Donne, about to travel to France and Germany, wrote for his wife this valediction, or farewell speech. Like most poetry of Donne's time, it ...

Lions

while the rest just watch. Communal cub rearing confers substantial benefits: groups of mothers can successfully defend their cubs against an infanticidal male, whereas a lone female has no chance one-on-one. But most other felids — for example, leopards, cougars, tigers, bobcats and lynx — are also infanticidal, yet they are all solitary. The true hallmark of lion sociality is their joint defe...

Mourning Dr Welby.

Tales From Taiwan: Mourning