Funeral Festivals in America: Rituals for the Living (Material Worlds) - Hardcover

Thursby, Jacqueline S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813123801 ISBN 13: 9780813123806

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky, 2006

Synopsis

When Evelyn Waugh wrote The Loved One (1948) as a satire of the elaborate preparations and memorialization of the dead taking place in his time, he had no way of knowing how extraordinarily creative and technical human funerary practices would become. Jacqueline S. Thursby explores how modern American funerals and their accompanying rituals seem meant to benefit the living rather than the dead. Funeral Festivals in America suggests that there is an irony in the festivities surrounding death and that the American response to death often develops into an event celebrating the ties between family members and friends. Thursby cites rituals for loved ones separated at the time of death, the frivolities surrounding death, funeral foods and feasts, post-funeral rites and ongoing commemorations, and many other facets of the American way of dealing with death.

About this title

About the Author

Jacqueline S. Thursby is an associate professor in the English department at Brigham Young University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813123801
• ISBN 13: 9780813123806
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 168