Georges Banu edits collective book on the dying child motif

Georges Banu introduces a collective volume exploring the recurring motif of the dying child across theater, cinema, literature, and visual arts. The book treats the figure as a 'theme with variations' in a musical sense, emphasizing its ongoing reinterpretation. The child is presented as indeterminate—without sex or name—heightening the tragic dimension. Banu argues that the death of a child represents an unacceptable, unrepresentable mental experience that resists depiction, as exemplified by Delacroix's 'The Massacre at Chios.' The work establishes a typology of child deaths including assassination, infanticide, abortion, and illness, embodied by figures such as Medea, the child murderer in Fritz Lang's 'M,' and Andres Serrano's photographs of disfigured infants. The volume is published by L'Entretemps éditions.