Death, ritual, and belief : the rhetoric of funerary rites / Douglas Davies.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davies, Douglas J. (Douglas James), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Death--Religious aspects--Comparative studies.

Death.

Death--Religious aspects.

Funeral rites and ceremonies.

Genre:

Comparative studies.

Physical Description:

vi, 303 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

Third Edition.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

Summary:

Death, Ritual and Belief, now in its third edition, explores many important issues related to death and dying from a religious studies perspective, with insights from anthropology and sociology, Using the motif of 'words against death' it depicts human responses to grief by surveying the many ways in which people have not let death have the last word, not simply in terms of funeral rites but also in memorials, graves, and in ideas of ancestors, souls, gods, reincarnation and resurrection, whether in the great religious traditions of the world or in more local customs. Douglas Davies also examines bereavement and grief, experiences of the presence of the dead, near-death experiences, pet-death and the symbolic death played out in religious rites. Updated chapters have taken into account new research and include additional topics in this new edition, notably assisted dying, terrorism, green burial, material culture, death online, and the emergence of Death Studies as a distinctive field. Case studies range from Anders Breivik in Norway, to the Princess of Wales, and to the Rapture in the USA. A new perspective is also brought to Davies' account of grief theories. Providing an introduction to key authors and authorities on death beliefs, bereavement, grief and ritual-symbolism, Death, Ritual and Belief is an authoritative guide to the perspectives of major religious and secular worldviews. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Interpreting death rites 3

2 Coping with corpses: Impurity, fertility and fear 31

3 Theories of grief 53

4 Violence, sacrifice and conquest 79

5 Eastern destiny and death 99

6 Ancestors, cemeteries and local identity 109

7 Jewish and Islamic Destinies 137

8 Christianity and the death of Jesus 147

9 Near-death, symbolic death and rebirth 167

10 Somewhere to die 177

11 Souls and the presence of the dead 187

12 Pet and animal death 207

13 Robots, books, films and buildings 223

14 Offending death, grief and religions 239

15 Secular death and life 251.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781474250962

1474250963

9781474250955

1474250955

OCLC:

1001287205