THE NEW CONSOLATION LITERATURE

Anne Douglass wrote an article, "Heaven Our Home" that was published in Stannard's Death in America in 19xx. In it she established a new genre, 'consolation literature', and she argued that it was already a part of American culture before the trauma created by the enormous loss of life in the American Civil War. 

Consolation literature was x and y. We have witnessed a rebirth of such literature in the turn toward the 21st century. I will do two things in my presentation: first I will provide an overview of this new consolation literature, specifying how it differs from that produced in the mid-19th century; then I will offer a theoretical hypothesis about why I think this genre was reborn in our world. 

The modern authors I cite will be Mitch Albom, Eben Alexander, Todd Burpo, Whoever wrote "The Shack", Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.