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15 results

  • Imagining the Medieval Afterlife: Introduction
  • Edited by Richard Matthew Pollard, Université du Québec à Montréal
  • Book: Imagining the Medieval Afterlife
  • Published online: 07 December 2020
  • Print publication: 17 December 2020, pp 1-6
  • View extract

    Summary

    This short introduction first places the medieval tradition of thought about the afterlife in a larger and longer context, then lays out the historiographical background for the collection. It also briefly introduces each of the fifteen chapters, noting how together they tend to shift the focus away from the twelfth century (hitherto considered a key turning point in the history of the afterlife) to the early Middle Ages and the later. It closes by noting that the contributions also keep to a current trend of seriously considering the reception and influence of texts and ideas, here suggesting that afterlife visions (for example) became an integral part of the medieval imagination.

Imagining the Medieval Afterlife
  • Imagining the Medieval Afterlife
  • Edited by Richard Matthew Pollard
  • Published online: 07 December 2020
  • Print publication: 17 December 2020
  • View description
    Where do we go after we die? This book traces how the European Middle Ages offered distinctive answers to this universal question, evolving from Antiquity through to the sixteenth century, to reflect a variety of problems and developments. Focussing on texts describing visions of the afterlife, alongside art and theology, this volume explores heaven, hell, and purgatory as they were imagined across Europe, as well as by noted authors including Gregory the Great and Dante. A cross-disciplinary team of contributors including historians, literary scholars, classicists, art historians and theologians offer not only a fascinating sketch of both medieval perceptions and the wide scholarship on this question: they also provide a much-needed new perspective. Where the twelfth century was once the 'high point' of the medieval afterlife, the essays here show that the afterlives of the early and later Middle Ages were far more important and imaginative than we once thought.