Research Catalog

Title

A brief history of death / Douglas J. Davies.

Author

Davies, Douglas J. (Douglas James)

Publication

Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 184 p., [6] p. of plates : ill.; 19 cm.

Series Statement

Blackwell brief histories of religion

Subjects

• Death > Social aspects
• Death in art
• Death > Psychological aspects
• Death > Religious aspects

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 174-179) and index.

Contents

• pt. 1. Journey beyond. Gilgamesh ; Adam and Eve ; Death, sin and atonement ; Resurrection-transcendence ; Release-transcendence ; Self-transcendence ; Hope and faith ; To be or not to be ; Traditional futures ; The uneasy species ; Death our future ; Autobiographical history of death ; Methods of approach ; Words against death ; Myth again -- pt. 2. Parting's sweet sorrow. Relationships, death and destiny ; Family bonds ; Hell, life and work ; Secular ethics and loss ; Freud and Bowlby ; Grief-stages ; Fixing the unfixable ; Helplessness ; Aberbach and charisma ; World religions ; Identity and religions ; Identity's demise and death ; Adulthood-childhood, maturity and death of parents ; Moral-somatic links ; Spiritualism ; Departure -- pt. 3. Removing the dead. Souls ; Status and destiny ; Ritual change ; Resurrection ; Secular trends ; Changing times ; Default religion ; From respect to dignity ; Death-style and belief ; Cremated remains ; Space, cryogenics and computers.
• pt. 4. Ecology, death and hope. Criminals, heretics, bodies and belief ; Dying at home ; Hospice ; Symbolic bodies ; American ways of death ; Ecology ; Hope springs eternal ; Forest ; Positive and negative dust ; Ethics and spirituality at large ; Death's paradigm shift ; Ecological immortality -- pt. 5. Art, literature and music. Variety ; Bible ; Dante ; Milton ; Secular strains ; Art ; Portraying the dead ; Religious fusion ; Hope -- pt. 6. Places of memory. Myth ; The dynamics of memorial sites ; Locating hope: the dynamics of memorial sites ; Place and hope ; How to speak of the dead? ; Location 1: graveyard and cemetery ; Hope 1: eternal, eschatological form of identity ; Location 2: cremation and remains ; Hope 2: internal, the retrospective fulfilment of identity ; Location 3: woodland burial ; Hope 3: natural, the ecological fulfilment of identity ; Memorial texts ; The National Memorial Arboretum ; Lifestyle - death-style -- pt. 7. Fear of death. A mythical form ; Hinduism, Buddhism ; Christianity ; Albert Schweitzer and C.S. Lewis ; Essential fear ; Plague ; Modern devastations ; Philosophical fears ; Psychology and fear of death ; Picasso ; Fears real and imagined ; Contemporary fears ; Imaginative fears ; Fear abolished -- pt. 8. Purposeful and useless death. Power of death ; Warfare ; Genocide ; Violence at heart ; Disasters ; Baby-death ; Suicide - euthanasia ; Offending deaths ; Illness and death ; The future of death ; Christian eternal life ; Death's margins ; Age and death ; Hopeless non-places ; 2020 time and vision ; The world's death.

Call Number

JFC 06-182

ISBN

• 1405101822 (alk. paper)
• 1405101830 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

2004011683

OCLC

55495037

Author

Davies, Douglas J. (Douglas James)

Title

A brief history of death / Douglas J. Davies.

Imprint

Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2005.

Series

Blackwell brief histories of religion

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (p. 174-179) and index.

Research Call Number

JFC 06-182