Death and Afterlife in Modern France - Thomas A. Kselman

Death and Afterlife in Modern France

Buch | Softcover
432 Seiten
2014
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-60209-7 (ISBN)
62,25 inkl. MwSt
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.

List of IllustrationsList of TablesPrefaceIntroduction3Pt. 1Mortality and Mortal KnowledgeCh. 1Progress and Anxiety in French Demography15Pt. 2Folk, Orthodox, and Alternative CulturesCh. 2Folk Religion: Tales of the Dead37Ch. 3Catholicism and the Cult of the Dead65Ch. 4Alternative Afterlives in the Nineteenth Century125Pt. 3The Material Culture of DeathCh. 5From Churchyard to Cemetery165Ch. 6The Origins of Commercial Funerals222Ch. 7The Diffusion and Reform of Pompes Funebres257Epilogue: Courbet's Burial at Ornans and the Cult of the Dead291Notes303Select Bibliography377Index401

Erscheint lt. Verlag 14.7.2014
Reihe/Serie Princeton Legacy Library
Verlagsort New Jersey
Sprache englisch
Maße 152 x 229 mm
Gewicht 595 g
Themenwelt Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie
Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie Volkskunde
Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie Mikrosoziologie
ISBN-10 0-691-60209-3 / 0691602093
ISBN-13 978-0-691-60209-7 / 9780691602097
Zustand Neuware
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