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

Description

Describing a great variety of funeral rituals 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 growth of afterlife beliefs. The key theme of this book is the rhetoric of death - the way cultures use the most potent weapon of words to bring new power to life. Human identity and its transformation through mortuary rites are explored through the mummies of Chile and Egypt, African sacrificial deaths, Indian cremations, immigrant cemeteries in the USA, ancestor rites in Eastern religions and in Mormonism and the freezing of the dead in cryonics.

Douglas Davies is Professor in the Study of Religion and Director of the Centre for Death and Life Studies at Durham University, UK. He is the author of Natural Burial (2012), The Theology of Death (2008) and A Brief History of Death (2004). He is also the editor, along with Lewis Mates, of The Encyclopedia of Cremation (2005). Professor Davies is a Fellow of the British Academy, as well as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Learned Society of Wales.

"Professor Douglas Davies' perceptive and thought-provoking book... provides a rich framework in which to consider the perennial questions of the human response to death. From this book, the fruit of wide-ranging research and reading, it is clear that Professor Davies has established himself as one of the leading writers in an increasingly important field." --Geoffrey Rowell, The Tablet "This updated and much enlarged book contains fascinating information and discussion about the many, varied issues nestling under the heading of 'death studies'. It would make an excellent textbook." --Modern Believing, July 2003