Includes bibliographical references (p. [222]-252) and index.

1. Introduction -- Pt. I. Locating Lament as Object -- 2. For Crying Out Loud : What Is Lament Anyway? -- 3. Lament and Emotion -- 4. Antiquity, Metaculture, and the Control of Lament -- Pt. II. Losing Lament: Modernity as Loss -- 5. Cultural Amnesia and the Objectification of Lament in Bangladesh -- 6. Modern Transformations -- 7. How Shame Spreads in Modernity -- 8. Crying Backward: Primitivist Representations of Lament -- Pt. III. Reviving Lament: Lament as Key Trope of Modernity -- 9. Mourning Becomes the Electron's Age: Lamenting Modernity(ies) -- 10. Lament's (Post)Modern Vertigo: Floating in a Deterritorialized Media Sea -- 11. Lament in a Postmodern World of "Revivals" -- 12. Conclusion.

"For millennia, lamenting - expressing grief through crying songs, often in a collective ritual context - both sustained and challenged communities around the world. Like all artistic processes, it at once defines and transforms humanity's deepest feelings. In recent centuries, however, communities that once joined together in lament have rejected it, in apparent shame. Building on ethnographic fieldwork and extensive historical evidence, James Wilce analyzes lament across thousands of years and nearly every continent, illustrating human commonalities and cultural diversity. In doing so, he offers a new perspective on modernity and postmodernity by demonstrating their fundamental relationship to lament."--BOOK JACKET.