From Sin to Insanity : Suicide in Early Modern Europe / Jeffrey Watt.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Watt, Jeffrey, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social history.

Suicidal behavior--Europe--History.

Suicidal behavior.

Suicide--Europe--History.

Suicide.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 240 p. :) ill. ;

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In the broadest treatment yet of suicide in Europe during the period 1500-1800, 11 authors combine elements of social, cultural, legal, and intellectual history to trace important changes in the ways Europeans experienced and understood voluntary death. Well into the seventeenth century, Europeans viewed suicide as a terrible crime and an unforgivable sin resulting from demonic temptation. By the late eighteenth century, however, suicide was rarely subject to judicial penalties, and society tended to blame self-inflicted death on insanity rather than on the devil. From Sin to Insanity shows that early modern Europe witnessed nothing less than the birth of modern suicide: increasing in frequency, self-inflicted death became decriminalized, secularized, and medicalized, viewed as a regrettable but not shameful result of reversals in fortune or physical or mental infirmity. The ten chapters focus on suicide cases and attitudes toward self-murder from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries in geographical settings as diverse as Scandinavia and Hungary, France and Germany, England and Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List Of Illustrations

List Of Tables

Introduction:Toward A History Of Suicide In Early Modern Europe / Watt, Jeffrey R.

1. The Judicial Treatment of Suicide in Amsterdam / Bosman, Machiel

2. Suicide and the Vicar General in London:A Mystery Solved? / Seaver, Paul S.

3. Controlling the Body of the Suicide in Saxony / Koslofsky, Craig M.

4. The Suicidal Mind and Body: Examples from Northern Germany / Lind, Vera

5. Suicidal Murders in Stockholm / Jansson, Arne

6. Ambivalence toward Suicide in Golden Age Spain / Dickenson, Elizabeth G. / Boyden, James M.

7. Honfibú: Nationhood, Manhood, and the Culture of Self-Sacrifice in Hungary / Lederer, David

8. Suicide, Gender, and Religion:The Case of Geneva / Watt, Jeffrey R.

9. Suicide in Paris, 1775 / Merrick, Jeffrey

10. The Suicide of Sir Samuel Romilly:Apotheosis or Outrage? / Andrew, Donna T.

Acknowledgments

Notes

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-230) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Apr 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501732614

1501732617

OCLC:

1132227089