Departure and arrival: loss and mourning in literary migrant narratives

[Truncated abstract] This thesis contends that complex forms of loss constellate literary migrant narratives. Specifically, I argue that loss in migrant narratives is found to be central to the formation of subjectivity in journeys of migration. Building upon the distinction between mourning and melancholia as distinct reactions to loss, the productivities of both processes are analysed in four contemporary literary texts concerned with migration. While the selected texts dramatise a response to loss, they do not offer redemptive or consolatory resolutions to the pain of grief. Instead, they retain an open-ended melancholic engagement with the past, and demonstrate an attempt to register the pain of loss through different modes of productivity.