Synopses & Reviews
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.
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Review
"Such is the wealth of research and scholarship in this intriguing book that there is almost enough for several volumes. . . . [I]t is a volume of unusual richness, and is meticulous in its documentation. Above all, it is sensitive to the complexities and paradoxes."
--Journal of Religious History
Table of Contents
| 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 |