Examining modernity?s pervasive rhetoric of loss and crisis from the unique perspective of women?s lament traditions, Lamentation and Modernity analyzes the ideological uses of loss in literary, philosophical, and social texts from the late 19th and 20th centuries. A significant reassessment of conceptions of modernity, At God?s Funeral contains studies of the lament tradition and the history of trauma; of philosophical texts by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida; of literary works by William Faulkner, Stephane Mallarme, Dimitris Hatzis, and Tahar Ben Jelloun, and of relevant cultural contexts, including the American ?New South,? French nationalism of the 1880s, the Greek independence struggle, and the (de)colonization of Morocco.