Mirrors of Mortality

by Joachim Whaley

First published in 1981, this reissue examines mankind's preoccupation with death and mortality by isolating various societies in different periods of time. The authors examine not only the formal rituals associated with the last rite of passage, but also the social attitudes to death and dying which these rituals evidence. The essays establish that different periods do seem to be characterized by different images of death and attitudes to it, but the authors wisely avoid trying to impose strict chronological pattern. A pioneering work in the historical study of attitudes to death, this reissue should reignite discussion on the significance of death in human history.Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood examines attitudes to death as reflected in myth and religious thought in Ancient Greece and relates them to social and economic change. R. C. Finucane analysis the social significance of the 'exemplary' deaths of kings, criminals, traitors and saints in medieval Europe. Paul Fritz's essay illustrates the importance of royal burials in early modern Britian; while Joachim Whaley examines the social and political significance of funerals in Hamburg between 1500 and 1800. John McManners discusses the work of Phililppe Aries and other prominent French scholars on the history of attitudes to death. David Irwin examines the images of death portrayed in European tombs around 1800. C.A Bayly analyzes the relationship between death ritual and society in Hindu Northern India, while David Cannadine discusses the impact of war on attitudes to death in modern Britain.

252 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1982

About the author

Joachim Whaley is Professor of German History and Thought at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. His research interests lie in German history, thought and culture from 1500 to the present day. He is the author of Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529-1819 (1985) and the editor of Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death (1981; reissued in 2011). He has also published numerous articles, reviews and contributions to handbooks and lexicons of German history and literature. His latest book is the two-volume Germany and the Holy Roman Empire 1493-1806 (2012), which covers virtually every aspect of German history from the reign of Maximilian I to the dissolution of the Reich and appears in the Oxford History of Early Modern Europe series. He is currently writing a history of Austria and German-speaking Europe from the later Middle Ages to the present day.

Joachim Whaley has been a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society since 1984. In 2013 he was awarded a LittD by the University of Cambridge for his books and articles on early modern German history.