Kselman Death and Afterlife in Modern France

Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-6298-6
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 432 Seiten

Reihe: Princeton Legacy Library

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kselman, Thomas A.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Preface

Introduction 3

Pt. 1 Mortality and Mortal Knowledge

Ch. 1 Progress and Anxiety in French Demography 15

Pt. 2 Folk, Orthodox, and Alternative Cultures

Ch. 2 Folk Religion: Tales of the Dead 37

Ch. 3 Catholicism and the Cult of the Dead 65

Ch. 4 Alternative Afterlives in the Nineteenth Century 125

Pt. 3 The Material Culture of Death

Ch. 5 From Churchyard to Cemetery 165

Ch. 6 The Origins of Commercial Funerals 222

Ch. 7 The Diffusion and Reform of Pompes Funebres 257

Epilogue: Courbet's Burial at Ornans and the Cult of the Dead 291

Notes 303

Select Bibliography 377

Index 401