Death in America

by David E. Stannard (Editor)

The subject of death is treated as an aspect of cultural history, which includes the ideas about God, sin, death, and damnation imparted to children in Puritan New England; nineteenth-century America's grim acceptance of, if not relish for, death; consolation literature in the nineteenth century; the "rural cemetery" movement; and death in Mormon and Mexican societies. Contributors : Philippe Ariès, Ann Douglas, Stanley French, Jack Goody, Patricia Fernández Kelly, Mary Ann Meyers, Lewis O. Saum, David E. Stannard.

Genres: Death

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[David Shuster · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, this is really a compilation of essays of varying quality imo. I also don't know enough of the scholary context to say whether this compilation or its constituent essays were presenting new ideas/info or not. On the whole, for now I give it a high 2-stars (which in Goodreads' official tooltip is "it is ok"). It raises some interesting points and makes me wonder why "Death Studies" isn't more of a thing, but some of the articles were just not that interesting, and the interesting ones were probably honestly not all that novel in what they presented (but idk, I haven't looked into these things that much). Also, as a whole, I think there was a weird mix of styles. Some articles were "here's a bunch of info, and I don't have any thoughts on it," and some were more like "here's a bunch of thoughts, albeit I don't quite have enough concrete info to back it up, but at least it's an interesting idea, even if I'm overstating its case."

Intro by Stannard: fine

Goody's article: fine, pretty interesting

Death and the Puritan Child by Stannard: I really enjoyed this one. I think some of the things about Puritan severity are overstated, but the demographic information about infant mortality etc. was fascinating, as well as the little bits about how children perceive things (e.g. p. 25)

Saum's article: ehh, shrug

Douglas's article: To be honest, there were pockets in here that were actually reasonably interesting to read, especially pp. 51-54. Fascinating stuff about connections between liberalization of the American church, feminization of said church, changing views of death, and questions of class, etc. But it was way longer and more flowerily written than it needed to be.

French's article: Ok, some interesting tidbits, but also kind of a meandering dump of random info (at least as I felt while reading it). Not a tight article.

Kelly's article: interesting because I knew next to nothing about its contents, but maybe trying to cover too broad a topic to say anything super punchy (and kind of admits that or something, idk).

Myers' article: kinda interesting because Mormons are funky, but mostly pretty boring. I guess it's closer to an info presentation than an argument of any actual ideas, so... informative but not insightful.

The Reversal of Death by Aries: fine, not bad, well-placed as the closer of this book since it brought to mind connections from the other articles. Mainly just makes me want to read Geoffrey Gorer's article since that feels like the bulk of what Aries talks about lol.