This comparative study places literary meditation on death in the context of the emergence of a 'meditative concept of conscience' in the early modern age. On the basis of an extensive corpus of German, French, and English sources, meditatio mortis is scrutinized for its potential in the individualization of memory. The study concentrates on the literary and poetological consequences of meditation for the textual structure. The most prominent characteristic of this is the high degree of self-reflection and the significance of the anatomical perspective, both of which leave their mark on the self-contemplation of the meditative self.