A lecture course aimed primarily at 2nd and 3rd year BA students.
This course explores the representations of death in poems, plays and prose of medieval England. Attitudes to death may have varied during years of plague and war: Church teaching encouraged the creation of texts that taught people how to die well, and how to be prepared for death in order to avoid eternal punishment in hell; saints’ lives provided positive examples, while pictures and funeral monuments provided terrifying images of mortality. Within the momento mori tradition the dance of death trope evolved, with its combination of visual and textual elements. Images of death in medieval art will be discussed, and presentations of death and dying on the medieval stage.
- Enseignant·e: Elisabeth Dutton