A World of Their Own Making: Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family Values - Softcover

Gillis, John R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674961889 ISBN 13: 9780674961883

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Weddings, birthdays, funerals, reunions, Mother's Day, even Christmas, we think of these ritual events as timeless traditions, our links to the distant past and the future. John Gillis aims to reveal just how modern and how politically constructed these rituals are. Our whole society may be obsessed with family values, but as John Gillis points out in this book, most of our images of home-sweet-home are of very recent vintage. The book questions our idealized notion of "the family" a mind-set in which myth and symbol still hold sway. As the families we live with become more fragile, the symbolic families we live by become more powerful. Yet it is only by accepting the notion that our ritual, myths, and images must be open to perpetual revision that we can satisfy our human needs and changing circumstances. The book uses both recent and historical literature on Western family life from the Middle Ages to the present.

About this title

About the Author

John R. Gillis is Professor of History at Rutgers University and author of For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674961889
• ISBN 13: 9780674961883
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 330