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Author: Philippe Ariès
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 1975-08-01
Total Pages: 126
ISBN-13: 0801817625
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →AriA]s traces Western man's attitudes toward mortality from the early medieval conception of death as the familiar collective destiny of the human race to the modern tendency, so pronounced in industrial societies, to hide death as if it were an embarrassing family secret. -- Newsweek
Author: Philippe Aries
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2013-11-06
Total Pages: 697
ISBN-13: 0804152004
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An “absolutely magnificent” book (The New Republic)—the fruit of almost two decades of study—that traces the changes in Western attitudes toward death and dying from the earliest Christian times to the present day. A truly landmark study, The Hour of Our Death reveals a pattern of gradually developing evolutionary stages in our perceptions of life in relation to death, each stage representing a virtual redefinition of human nature. Starting at the very foundations of Western culture, the eminent historian Phillipe Ariès shows how, from Graeco-Roman times through the first ten centuries of the Common Era, death was too common to be frightening; each life was quietly subordinated to the community, which paid its respects and then moved on. Ariès identifies the first major shift in attitude with the turn of the eleventh century when a sense of individuality began to rise and with it, profound consequences: death no longer meant merely the weakening of community, but rather the destruction of self. Hence the growing fear of the afterlife, new conceptions of the Last Judgment, and the first attempts (by Masses and other rituals) to guarantee a better life in the next world. In the 1500s attention shifted from the demise of the self to that of the loved one (as family supplants community), and by the nineteenth century death comes to be viewed as simply a staging post toward reunion in the hereafter. Finally, Ariès shows why death has become such an unendurable truth in our own century—how it has been nearly banished from our daily lives—and points out what may be done to “re-tame” this secret terror. The richness of Ariès's source material and investigative work is breathtaking. While exploring everything from churches, religious rituals, and graveyards (with their often macabre headstones and monuments), to wills and testaments, love letters, literature, paintings, diaries, town plans, crime and sanitation reports, and grave robbing complaints, Aries ranges across Europe to Russia on the one hand and to England and America on the other. As he sorts out the tangled mysteries of our accumulated terrors and beliefs, we come to understand the history—indeed the pathology—of our intellectual and psychological tensions in the face of death.
Author: Maria-José Blanco
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2014-10-01
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 1782384340
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The social and cultural changes of the last century have transformed death from an everyday fact to something hidden from view. Shifting between the practical and the theoretical, the professional and the intimate, the real and the fictitious, this collection of essays explores the continued power of death over our lives. It examines the idea and experience of death from an interdisciplinary perspective, including studies of changing burial customs throughout Europe; an account of a“dying party” in the Netherlands; examinations of the fascination with violent death in crime fiction and the phenomenon of serial killer art; analyses of death and bereavement in poetry, fiction, and autobiography; and a look at audience reactions to depictions of death on screen. By studying and considering how death is thought about in the contemporary era, we might restore the natural place it has in our lives.
Author: Philippe Ariès
Publisher:
Published: 1981
Total Pages: 651
ISBN-13: 9780760720875
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In this enduring classic, cultural historian Philippe Ariès brings death out of the shadows and into history's mainstream. He explores how over the last millennium the response to death and dying has changed dramatically in Europe, Western Russia, and America, sometimes initiating, sometimes reflecting social shifts and progress. Under Ariès's incisive scrutiny, Church observances, pilgrimage and penance, and folk beliefs spring into high relief. Archaic funeral ceremonies, the architecture of tombs, and images of the deceased in stone or paint regain often lost meanings; the liber vitae, the artes moriendi, and the danse macabre are stripped of mystery, and their purpose and power made plain. Through a rich array of journals and letters from all periods and classes, as well as religious and secular literature from Dante to Tolstoy and Twain, Aries demonstrates society's concern for reassurance against the finality of death and the individual's search for consolation. Ariès brilliantly analyzes death in the contemporary world in which the hospital, suburban chapel, and crematorium have replaced the bedside, priest, and wake. As his richly documented, finely illustrated, and engagingly written masterpiece confirms, death and dying have inspired much of the literature of--and art that forms--our cultural heritage.--From publisher description.
Author: Peter Metcalf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1991-10-25
Total Pages: 10
ISBN-13: 9780521423755
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Machine derived contents note: List of illustrations -- Preface -- Introduction to the second edition -- 1. Preliminaries -- Part I. Universals and Culture: 2. Emotional reactions to death -- 3. Symbolic associations of death -- Part II. Death as Transition: 4. The living and the dead: a re-examination of Hertz -- 5. Death rituals and life values: rites of passage reconsidered -- Part III. The Royal Corpse and the Body Politic: 6. The dead king -- 7. The immortal kingship -- Part IV. Seeing Ourselves Anew: 8. American deathways -- Bibliography -- Index.
Author: Stefan C. Reif
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Published: 2014-08-27
Total Pages: 354
ISBN-13: 3110377489
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Jewish customs and traditions about death, burial and mourning are numerous, diverse and intriguing. They are considered by many to have a respectable pedigree that goes back to the earliest rabbinic period. In order to examine the accurate historical origins of many of them, an international conference was held at Tel Aviv University in 2010 and experts dealt with many aspects of the topic. This volume includes most of the papers given then, as well as a few added later. What emerges are a wealth of fresh material and perspectives, as well as the realization that the high Middle Ages saw a set of exceptional innovations, some of which later became central to traditional Judaism while others were gradually abandoned. Were these innovations influenced by Christian practice? Which prayers and poems reflect these innovations? What do the sources tell us about changing attitudes to death and life-after death? Are tombstones an important guide to historical developments? Answers to these questions are to be found in this unusual, illuminating and readable collection of essays that have been well documented, carefully edited and well indexed.
Author: Ruth Richardson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 472
ISBN-13: 0226712400
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In the early nineteenth century, body snatching was rife because the only corpses available for medical study were those of hanged murderers. With the Anatomy Act of 1832, however, the bodies of those who died destitute in workhouses were appropriated for dissection. At a time when such a procedure was regarded with fear and revulsion, the Anatomy Act effectively rendered dissection a punishment for poverty. Providing both historical and contemporary insights, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute opens rich new prospects in history and history of science. The new afterword draws important parallels between social and medical history and contemporary concerns regarding organs for transplant and human tissue for research.
Author: Pittu Laungani
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003-09-02
Total Pages: 412
ISBN-13: 1134789777
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →All societies have their own customs and beliefs surrounding death. In the West, traditional ways of mourning are disappearing, and though science has had a major impact on views of death, it has taught us little about the way to die or to grieve. Many who come into contact with the dying and the bereaved from other cultures are at a loss to know how to offer appropriate and sensitive support. Death and Bereavement Across Cultures, provides a handbook with which to meet the needs of doctors, nurses, social workers, counsellors and others involved in the care of the dying and bereaved. Written by international authorities in the field, this important text: * describes the rituals and beliefs of major world religions * explains their psychological and historical context * shows how customs change on contact with the West * considers the implications for the future This book explores the richness of mourning traditions around the world with the aim of increasing the understanding which we all bring to the issue of death.
Author: Brandy Schillace
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2016-01-15
Total Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 1681770938
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Death is something we all confront—it touches our families, our homes, our hearts. And yet we have grown used to denying its existence, treating it as an enemy to be beaten back with medical advances.We are living at a unique point in human history. People are living longer than ever, yet the longer we live, the more taboo and alien our mortality becomes. Yet we, and our loved ones, still remain mortal. People today still struggle with this fact, as we have done throughout our entire history. What led us to this point? What drove us to sanitize death and make it foreign and unfamiliar?Schillace shows how talking about death, and the rituals associated with it, can help provide answers. It also brings us closer together—conversation and community are just as important for living as for dying. Some of the stories are strikingly unfamiliar; others are far more familiar than you might suppose. But all reveal much about the present—and about ourselves.
