Front cover image for Death, Ritual, and Belief : the Rhetoric of Funerary Rites

Death, Ritual, and Belief : the Rhetoric of Funerary Rites

Describing a great variety of funeral ritual from major world religions and from local traditions, this book shows how cultures not only cope with corpses but also create an added value for living through the encouragement of afterlife beliefs. The explosion of interest in death in recent years reflects the key theme of this book - the rhetoric of death - the way cultures use the most potent weapon of words to bring new power to life. This new edition is one third longer than the original with new material on the death of Jesus, the most theorized death ever which offers a useful case study fo
eBook, English, 2002
Bloomsbury Publishing UK, London, 2002
1 online resource (272 pages)
9781441112798, 1441112790
1024277495
Introduction1 Interpreting death rites2 Coping with corpses: impurity, fertility and fear3 Theories of grief4 Sacrifice, violence and conquest5 Eastern destiny and death6 Ancestors cemeteries and local identities7 Jewish and Islamic destinies8 Christianity and Offending Death9 Symbolic death and rebirth10 Somewhere to die11 Souls and the presence of the dead12 Pet and animal death13 Book, film and building14 Death, and the birth of religions15 Secular death and life