AustLit

'Is it possible to feel too much? For millennia, stories from around the world have had as their explicit task the expansion of the human heart. Only in the past two decades have some stories been prefaced with the words ‘trigger warning’. For the first time in history, certain written narratives have been seen as potentially too powerful, too overwhelming for those who willingly choose to hear them. This isn’t Plato warning us about poets; nor is it the censorship of a thousand authorities through the ages. Trigger warnings are messages to the faithful – ‘Here Be Dragons’. But when did we become so afraid of feeling? This paradox of being drawn to disproportionate emotion lies at the heart of The Seven Stages of Grieving.' (Introduction)