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UBC: The Puritan Way of Death
Feb. 12th, 2011 02:52 pmStannard, David E. The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
This is a very uneven book. When Stannard is actually talking about seventeenth and eighteenth century New England and the conflict in Puritan orthodoxy between longing for and fear of death, he's excellent (the section on funerary carving and sculpture was particularly illuminating). But he insists on trying to make a transhistorical argument (of the "since the beginning of time" sort), and those parts of the book I found both unconvincing and off-putting: I didn't want to be convinced, because the argument seemed smug, superficial, and arrogant. And very 1977.
And there's this fascinating piece of historical trivia:
It pings my story radar something fierce.
Also, to an even greater degree of trivium: one of Cotton Mather's many publications was a book entitled Death Made Easie & Happy. Which, because my brain works this way, sparked the following progression:
Death Made Easie & Happy ==> Death Made Easy ==> The Idiot's Guide to Death ==> Death for Dummies
That also badly wants a story, but I'm not sure I'm the one who ought to write it.
This is a very uneven book. When Stannard is actually talking about seventeenth and eighteenth century New England and the conflict in Puritan orthodoxy between longing for and fear of death, he's excellent (the section on funerary carving and sculpture was particularly illuminating). But he insists on trying to make a transhistorical argument (of the "since the beginning of time" sort), and those parts of the book I found both unconvincing and off-putting: I didn't want to be convinced, because the argument seemed smug, superficial, and arrogant. And very 1977.
And there's this fascinating piece of historical trivia:
in New York during the late seventeenth century, funeral ceremony was so neglected that legislation had to passed requiring that some attention be paid to the dead in order that instances of foul play might be discovered; it was ordered that every time someone in the colony died a delegation of neighbors was to be called to view the body and follow it to an approved grave site to be sure that it in fact arrived there and was properly interred.
(Stannard 129)
It pings my story radar something fierce.
Also, to an even greater degree of trivium: one of Cotton Mather's many publications was a book entitled Death Made Easie & Happy. Which, because my brain works this way, sparked the following progression:
Death Made Easie & Happy ==> Death Made Easy ==> The Idiot's Guide to Death ==> Death for Dummies
That also badly wants a story, but I'm not sure I'm the one who ought to write it.
