Death and Afterlife in Modern France (eBook)

Thomas A. Kselman (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2014
432 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-6298-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Although today in France church attendance is minimal, when death occurs many families still cling to religious rites. In exploring this common reaction to one of the most painful aspects of existence, Thomas Kselman turns to nineteenth-century French beliefs about death and the afterlife not only to show how deeply rooted the cult of the dead is in one Western society, but how death and the behavior of mourners have been politicized in the modern world. Drawing on sermons preached in rural and urban parishes, folktales, and accounts of seances, the author vividly re-creates the social and cultural context in which most French people responded to death and dealt with anxieties about the self and its survival. Inspired mainly by Catholicism, beliefs about death provided a social basis for moral order throughout the nineteenth century and were vulnerable to manipulation by public officials and clergy. Kselman shows, however, that by mid-century the increase in urbanization, capitalism, family privacy, and expressed religious differences generated diverse attitudes toward death, causing funerals to evolve from Catholic neighborhood rituals into personalized symbolic events for Catholics and dissenters alike--the civil burial of Victor Hugo being perhaps the greatest symbol of rebellion. Kselman's discussion of the growth of commercial funerals and innovations in cemetery administration illuminates a new struggle for control over funeral arrangements, this time involving businessmen, politicians, families, and clergy. This struggle in turn demonstrates the importance of these events for defining social identity.Originally published in 1993.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.7.2014
• Reihe/Serie: Princeton Legacy Library
• Reihe/Serie: Princeton Legacy Library
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• Schlagworte: After the Funeral • Alphonse Bertillon • Anatole Le Braz • Ancien Régime • Armistice Day • Arthur Conan Doyle • Bernadette Soubirous • bretons • Brideshead Revisited • Bruno Latour • burial • Catafalque • Catholicism • Cemetery • Charles Baudelaire • Child Mortality • Christianity • Clergy • clericalism • coffin • Council of Paris • Counter-Reformation • cremation • Death • deathbed • Deathbed conversion • Death (personification) • Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution • Delacroix • Demography • Deregulation • Derek Humphry • dieu • Edgar Allan Poe • Émile Zola • evocation • Fatalism • folk religion • Franco-Prussian War • French Philosophy • Funeral • Funeral procession • Gabriel Marcel • Georges Clemenceau • Godfather Death • Grief • Gustave Courbet • hanging • hearse • Infant Mortality • infidel • Jacques Le Goff • Jean Baudrillard • Jean-Claude • Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Jean Meslier • Jules Michelet • July Monarchy • Laity • L'Assommoir • Le Chat Noir • Linda Nochlin • Literature • Louis Veuillot • Madame Bovary • Metempsychosis • monuments aux morts • mortality rate • mortal sin • Mourner • Mourning • Napoleon • near-death experience • Paris Basin (geology) • peasant • Pierre Leroux • Pierre Nora • Politique • Population decline • Presses Universitaires de France • purgatory • Religion • Retour des cendres • ridicule • Roger Martin du Gard • Secularization • slow death • Social Disintegration • Spiritism • Tales of the Dead • The American Way of Death • The Dead Father • The Denial of Death • The Great Cat Massacre • The House of the Dead (novel) • The Mysteries of Paris • Tuberculosis • Viaticum • Victor Hugo • World War I
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-6298-1 / 1400862981
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-6298-6 / 9781400862986