History of Death Culture

Author: [French] Philippe Ariès
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: The history of death is gripping. History requires weighing the various factors of a problem, turning back to gaze at death, and starting from death to review the collective attitudes toward welcoming death, discovering people's various responses along this journey—allowing no room for deception. The engagement with death is not an extension of life's expectations but an extension of the expectation of happiness. Death is feared, but the history of death is gripping. The study of death and the history of death will inevitably hold an indispensable place in the new history of thought. Ariès guides us from the perspective of death to review the development of Western death history since 1300, exploring the changes in collective attitudes toward death, studying the various responses of people in different periods and regions as they journey toward death, and even, to some extent, judging or evaluating a society through its death regime. Since its publication in 1983, this book has become a classic in the field. As a comprehensive study, it integrates demography, medicine, religion, sociology, and art and literary studies. With the support of abundant evidence, the author presents a complete and authoritative picture of Western death history: from the Black Death in the Middle Ages to the large-scale Baroque rituals of death, the "enlightened" death of natural philosophy, the "heroic" death of the Renaissance, the "bourgeois" death of will-making, and finally the modern taboo on death. In the new edition (2000 edition) of this book, the author's new preface summarizes the new achievements of research in the past 20 years.