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This chapter examines the idea that suffering can be a motivation for artistic productivity from four different angles. First, it situates the roots of this idea in European Romanticism. Second, it reviews psychoanalytic research into the links between mourning and creativity in the twentieth century, in particular by examining Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein and Donald W. Winnicott. Third, it outlines the social structures that organize the process of mourning at the beginning of the century and how these were transformed by the massive losses of the First World War. Finally, it lays out the modern philosophical framework with its emphasis on the ethics of mourning in the light of which Proustian mourning scenes are read in the following chapters.

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-60073-8_1

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