Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Interdisciplinary History
Review
Author(s): Bruce Mazlish
Review by: Bruce Mazlish
Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 5, No. 4, The History of the Family, II (
Spring, 1975), pp. 751-752
Published by: MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/202869
Accessed: 06-11-2015 16:28 UTC
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Reviews
WesternAttitudestowardDeath: Fromthe MiddleAges to the Present.By
Philippe Aries (trans. Patricia M. Ranum) (Baltimore, The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1974) iii pp. $6.50
The subjectof deathhas taken on new life recently in the West. There
has been a plethora of books and articles calling attention to our
metaphysicalattitudes,our funeralhabits,and our medical mores. The
historyof the subject, however, has enjoyed a comparativequietude,
remindingone of the silencenormally expected to surroundthe tomb.
Aries' little book, based on four lecturesgiven at Johns Hopkins
in 1973, is an ambitiouseffort to break that silence. He works within
the Annales tradition of the "history of mentalities," and seeks to
describeWestern attitudestoward death from the Middle Ages to the
present,just as earlier, in Centuriesof Childhood(New York, 1962),
he described attitudes to early life. His thesis is that in the Middle
Ages, death was ritualized,public (even children were present), and
connected to the supernatural;the individual was forewarned of his
death, which he conceived of as part of a collective destiny, and pre-
pared to play a meaningfulrole in it.
Then, changes occurredso that, by the twentieth century, death
has become shameful, a taboo subject, the event itself dissectedinto
bits ratherthan a single moment. The individualno longer sees him-
self as connected to a collectivity; his tomb or urn is a piece of private
property; and death, which typically occurs in a hospital, is the
negative conclusion to a life whose pursuit is earthly happiness.
Though Ariesis regrettablyvague and shiftingabout the stagesleading
to the changed situation in industrialsociety-and the United States
is his prime example of the new attitudes-he does mention nodal
points in the twelfth or thirteenthcenturies(awarenessof one's own
deathreplacesawarenessthat we all shalldie), in the eighteenthcentury
(awarenessof death of the other person), and in the eighteenth-
nineteenthcenturies(the romanticfascinationwith death as beautiful).
His method, as befitting the history of mentalities,is primarilyto
employ literaryexamplesand iconography,althoughhe does cite wills
at one point. One problem, then, is to know how closely the ideal
portrayedin these texts correspondswith the reality of ordinarylife.
Were victims of the plague, for example, sufficientlyforewarned of
their death so as to preparethemselvesin properly ritualizedfashion?
Another problem is to know whether all parts of the West were as
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752 | BRUCE MAZLISH
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