Overview

Bynum examines several periods between the 3rd and 14th centuries in which discussions of the body were central to Western eschatology, and suggests that Western attitudes toward the body that arose from these discussions still undergird our modern notions of the individual. She explores the ""plethora of ideas about resurrection in patristic and medieval literature--the metaphors, tropes, and arguments in which the ideas were garbed, their context and their consequences,"" in order to understand human life after death.

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9780231081269

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There are few historians of whom one can say that they have actually shifted some of the landscape of the writing of history in their own generation, but Bynum is one of them. -- The New Republic Bynum's account is a very impressive and persuasive one... well supported by textual references and by connections she makes between what the ancients wrote and their burial practices, treatment of corpses and cults of relics... [A] fascinating and wide-ranging account that tells us a lot about medieval thinking and practice. -- New York Times Book Review A remarkable achievement of scholarship and interpretation, an imaginative, determined, and persuasive probing of a counterintuitive thesis. -- Nicholas Terpstra, Sixteenth Century Journal

There are few historians of whom one can say that they have actually shifted some of the landscape of the writing of history in their own generation, but Bynum is one of them. The New Republic Bynum's account is a very impressive and persuasive one... well supported by textual references and by connections she makes between what the ancients wrote and their burial practices, treatment of corpses and cults of relics... [A] fascinating and wide-ranging account that tells us a lot about medieval thinking and practice. New York Times Book Review A remarkable achievement of scholarship and interpretation, an imaginative, determined, and persuasive probing of a counterintuitive thesis. -- Nicholas Terpstra Sixteenth Century Journal Summer 2007

Author Information

Caroline Walker Bynum is University Professor Emerita at Columbia University and professor emerita of medieval European history at the Institute for Advanced Study. Her books include Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women(1987); Metamorphosis and Identity (2001); Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (2007); and Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (2011).

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