Afterlives (eBook)

The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages

Nancy Mandeville Caciola (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016
384 Seiten
Cornell University Press (Verlag)
978-1-5017-0346-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Whatever interpretative standpoint one brings to belief in revenance in the Middle Ages, Afterlives provides a wealth of evidence combined with insightful commentary and discussion. This book is a major contribution to scholarship, and a highly recommended read.- The Folklore SocietySimultaneously real and unreal, the dead are people, yet they are not. The society of medieval Europe developed a rich set of imaginative traditions about death and the afterlife, using the dead as a point of entry for thinking about the self, regeneration, and loss. These macabre preoccupations are evident in the widespread popularity of stories about the returned dead, who interacted with the living both as disembodied spirits and as living corpses or revenants. In Afterlives, Nancy Mandeville Caciola explores this extraordinary phenomenon of the living's relationship with the dead in Europe during the five hundred years after the year 1000.Caciola considers both Christian and pagan beliefs, showing how certain traditions survived and evolved over time, and how attitudes both diverged and overlapped through different contexts and social strata. As she shows, the intersection of Christian eschatology with various pagan afterlife imaginingsfrom the classical paganisms of the Mediterranean to the Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, and Scandinavian paganisms indigenous to northern Europebrought new cultural values about the dead into the Christian fold as Christianity spread across Europe. Indeed, the Church proved surprisingly open to these influences, absorbing new images of death and afterlife in unpredictable fashion. Over time, however, the persistence of regional cultures and beliefs would be counterbalanced by the effects of an increasingly centralized Church hierarchy. Through it all, one thing remained constant: the deep desire in medieval people to bring together the living and the dead into a single community enduring across the generations.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 31.3.2016
• Zusatzinfo: 23 b&w halftones
• Verlagsort: Ithaca
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 160 x 160 mm
• Gewicht: 28 g
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Mittelalter
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Mittelalter
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Religionsgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Mikrosoziologie
• Schlagworte: Afterlife • afterlife lore • afterlife mythology • Christian eschatology • cultural tradition the afterlife • Dead in the Middle Ages • Death and Afterlife • death folktales • death in popular culture • death lore • death mythology • death rites • death rituals • death stories • Ghost Stories • history middle ages • history of christian doctrines • history of christian doctrines, history of doctrine,history of religion, Paganism, Supernatural, death in popular culture • History of Christianity • History of doctrines • History of Religion • medieval attitudes toward death • Medieval Beliefs • medieval Christian eschatology • medieval death • medieval Europe • medieval European history • Medieval History • medieval spirits • Medieval Studies • medieval traditions • Middle Ages • Paganism • premodern ghost • Supernatural • the afterlife
• ISBN-10: 1-5017-0346-3 / 1501703463
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5017-0346-1 / 9781501703461