| Unit name | Death and Society in the Middle Ages |
|---|---|
| Unit code | HIST20037 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Cervantes |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
NONE |
| Co-requisites |
Special Field Project |
| School/department | Department of History (Historical Studies) |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Death is an experience unique to everyone, yet common to all. In the later Middle Ages, for example, recurring outbreaks of plague, poor healthcare, a lack of sanitation and intermittent war meant mortality rates were high. Funerary practices and capital punishment meant death was often a public spectacle. This was an age when art and literature tended toward the macabre, and when stern admonishments from talking corpses were accompanied by the hope of salvation, charity and community. This unit will encourage students to examine key aspects of late medieval society through the prism of the relationship between the living and the dead. Students will examine a range of topics that may include religious attitudes toward death, burial rites, the cult of saints, the macabre, medicine, warfare and chivalry and the concept of ‘dying to the world’. Students may also be asked to reflect on the transition from medieval to modern and to interrogate this problematic epochal divide.
On successful completion of this unit students will have developed 1. a wider historical knowledge of the perceived experience and implications of death in the middle ages. 2. a deeper awareness of how to approach a long term historical analysis; 3. the ability to set individual issues within their longer term historical context; 4. the ability to analyse and generalise about issues of continuity and change; 5. the ability to select pertinent evidence/data in order to illustrate/demonstrate more general historical points; 6. the ability to derive benefit from and contribute effectively to large group discussion; 7. the ability to identify a particular academic interpretation, evaluate it critically and form an individual viewpoint; 8. the acquisition of key writing, research, and presentation skills.
Weekly 2-hour seminar Access to tutorial advice with unit tutor in consultation hours.
2-hour unseen written examination (summative, 100%)
Phillipe Ariés, The Hour of Our Death (London, 1981).
Ole Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346-1353: A Complete History (Woodbridge, 2004).
Paul Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (London, 1996).
Norman F. Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made (New York, 2001).
Samuel K. Cohn, The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (London, 2002).
Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th to 18th Centuries (New York, 1990).
