Images of man and death / Philippe Ariès ; translated by Janet Lloyd.

Translation of: Images de l'homme devant la mort.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-270).

Introduction: Death and the icon. 1 The cemetery and the church. 2 Tombs. 3 From the home to the grave. 4 The beyond. 5 Omnia vanitas. 6 The return of the cemetery. 7 The death of others. 8 What of today?

'Conceived as an "imaginary film," this book is a visual presentation of how individuals and society have reshaped their images of death to meet the prevailing beliefs and social realities of dying...Through Ari�s's eye we come to interpret the real and symbolic items that have expressed our ambiguity in confronting the end of life: the epitaph, the deathbed scene, the recumbent statue that may represent the living person or the corpse, a figure in prayer. He examines ceremonies and rituals; visions of purgatory, life after death, and reincarnation; romantic yerning and the temptation of self-annihilation.'

Hardcover