Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death

Published by De Gruyter 2016

Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death

Edited by: Albrecht Classen

Volume 16 in the series Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110436976

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Albrecht Classen, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.

Reviews

"Gleichwohl liegt hier ein Kompendium vieler interessanter bekannter aber auch neuer Aspekte vor, das einen lebendigen Einblick in einen im persönlichen und öffentlichen Denken gern vernachlässigten Themenbereich bietet."
Franz Neiske in: Franca recensio 2018/1 https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/frrec/article/view/45544

"This is the sixteenth volume in a series that has been a steady and significant contributor to key issues in scholarly thought. [...] This collection on death is a worthy addition to previous topics (which include such concepts as war, medicine, and sexuality). Without making claims to comprehensiveness (an impossible goal), the wide-ranging nature of this series highlights shared concepts within the long premodern era, and Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times takes its place as a valuable scholarly resource within this broader corpus."
Charlotte Stanford in: Mediaevistik 29 (2016), 325-328

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Table of Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Death and the Culture of Death Universal Cultural-Historial Observations, with an Emphasis on the Middle Ages Albrecht Classen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Heroic Poetry: Achievement and Heroic Death in Old English Literature John M. Hill Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Death and Ritual: The Role of Wills in Late Anglo-Saxon England Mary Louise Fellows Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
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 Rosemarie Danziger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
When the Dead No Longer Rest: The Religious Significance of Revenants in Sagas set in Viking Age Settlements Around the Time of Conversion Katharina Baier and Werner Schäfke Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
The North Portal of the Freiburg im Breisgau Minster: Cosmological Imagery as Funerary Art Nurit Golan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
The Effects of the Black Death: The Plague in Fourteenth-Century Religion, Literature, and Art Jean E. Jost Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Bonum est mortis meditari: Meanings and Functions of the Medieval Double Macabre Portrait Dominique DeLuca Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
Imagining the Mass of Death in Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale: A Critique of Medieval Eucharistic Practices Daniel F. Pigg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263
Death, Sinfulness, the Devil, and the Clerical Author: The Late Medieval German Didactic Debate Poem Des Teufels Netz and the World of Craftsmanship Albrecht Classen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
Pro Defunctis Exorare: The Community of the Living and the Dead in Jean Gerson’s Sermones de Omnibus Sanctis and de Mortuis Scott L. Taylor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
“And Thus She Will Perish:” Gender, Jurisdiction, and the Execution of Women in Late Medieval France Patricia Turning Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311
“Je viens …/d’estrange contrée”: Medieval French Comedy Envisions the Afterlife Sharon Diane King Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	339
Gallows Humor in the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea Connie L. Scarborough Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	357
Late Medieval Carved Cadaver Memorials in England and Wales Christina Welch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	373
Images of Mortality in Early English Drama Thomas Willard Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	411
New Perspectives of the Early Modern Afterlife: The Last Pilgrimage in the Poetry of John Donne and Sir Walter Raleigh Cyril L. Caspar Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	433
Maternal Death and Patriarchal Succession in Renaissance France Elizabeth Chesney Zegura Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	457
Fear of Seeming Death in Eighteenth-Century Europe Václav Grubhoffer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	491
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	519
List of Illustrations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	527
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	533

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scholars and graduates of literary studies, history, art history, cultural studies
Pages
- Front matter: 6
- Main content: 545
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 50
Keywords: Tod (Motiv); Todeserfahrung; Todesabbildungen

eBook

Published: April 11, 2016
ISBN: 9783110436976

Hardcover

Published: April 11, 2016
ISBN: 9783110442304