Death in the Middle Ages and early modern time : the material and spiritual conditions of the culture of death / edited by Albrecht Classen.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Classen, Albrecht, editor.

Series:

Fundamentals of medieval and early modern culture ; Volume 16.

Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 1864-3396 ; Volume 16

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Death--Social aspects--Europe--History.

Death.

Death--Europe--Religious aspects--History.

Middle Ages.

Material culture--Europe--History.

Material culture.

Death in art.

Death in literature.

Europe--History--1492-1648.

Europe.

Europe--Social life and customs.

Europe--Religious life and customs.

Europe--Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (552 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin, [Germany] ; Boston, [Massachusetts] : De Gruyter, 2016.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Death is not only the final moment of life, it also casts a huge shadow on human society at large. People throughout time have had to cope with death as an existential experience, and this also, of course, in the premodern world. The contributors to the present volume examine the material and spiritual conditions of the culture of death, studying specific buildings and spaces, literary works and art objects, theatrical performances, and medical tracts from the early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century. Death has always evoked fear, terror, and awe, it has puzzled and troubled people, forcing theologians and philosophers to respond and provide answers for questions that seem to evade real explanations. The more we learn about the culture of death, the more we can comprehend the culture of life. As this volume demonstrates, the approaches to death varied widely, also in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. This volume hence adds a significant number of new facets to the critical examination of this ever-present phenomenon of death, exploring poetic responses to the Black Death, types of execution of a female murderess, death as the springboard for major political changes, and death reflected in morality plays and art.

Contents:

Front matter

Table of Contents

Death and the Culture of Death / Classen, Albrecht

Heroic Poetry: Achievement and Heroic Death in Old English Literature / Hill, John M.

Death and Ritual: The Role of Wills in Late Anglo-Saxon England / Fellows, Mary Louise

Palimpsest in the Service of the Cult of the Saints-The False Arch in the Nave's Vault of the Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe / Danziger, Rosemarie

When the Dead No Longer Rest: The Religious Significance of Revenants in Sagas set in Viking Age Settlements Around the Time of Conversion / Baier, Katharina / Schäfke, Werner

The North Portal of the Freiburg im Breisgau Minster: Cosmological Imagery as Funerary Art / Golan, Nurit

The Effects of the Black Death: The Plague in Fourteenth-Century Religion, Literature, and Art / Jost, Jean E.

Bonum est mortis meditari: Meanings and Functions of the Medieval Double Macabre Portrait / DeLuca, Dominique

Imagining the Mass of Death in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale: A Critique of Medieval Eucharistic Practices / Pigg, Daniel F.

Death, Sinfulness, the Devil, and the Clerical Author: The Late Medieval German Didactic Debate Poem Des Teufels Netz and the World of Craftsmanship / Classen, Albrecht

Pro Defunctis Exorare: The Community of the Living and the Dead in Jean Gerson's Sermones de Omnibus Sanctis and de Mortuis / Taylor, Scott L.

"And Thus She Will Perish:" Gender, Jurisdiction, and the Execution of Women in Late Medieval France / Turning, Patricia

"Je viens .../d'estrange contrée": Medieval French Comedy Envisions the Afterlife / King, Sharon Diane

Gallows Humor in the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea / Scarborough, Connie L.

Late Medieval Carved Cadaver Memorials in England and Wales / Welch, Christina

Images of Mortality in Early English Drama / Willard, Thomas

New Perspectives of the Early Modern Afterlife: The Last Pilgrimage in the Poetry of John Donne and Sir Walter Raleigh / Caspar, Cyril L.

Maternal Death and Patriarchal Succession in Renaissance France / Zegura, Elizabeth Chesney

Fear of Seeming Death in Eighteenth-Century Europe / Grubhoffer, Václav

Contributors

List of Illustrations

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9783110434873

3110434873

9783110436976

3110436973

OCLC:

945767597