Suchergebnisse

Death and the macabre have always been deeply entrenched in Irish culture: one of its most celebrated sons, Bram Stoker, has granted Ireland a central place in the Gothic literary tradition. The wake and the funeral have a prominent place into the Irish obsession with death and all its paraphernalia. In their book about Irish funerary tradition, Nina Witoszek and Patrick Sheeran state how those traditions are a mark of identity and might be seen as politically charged since the history of Ireland is one of a country divided by opposing loyalties and religious affiliations. Poetry has been regarded as one of the most effective vehicles for the transmission of death traditions in the rich Irish culture, and the modern and contemporary Irish poetry is a remarkable depository of death imagery. By recalling the distinction by Vivian Mercier, who identifies 'macabre' and 'grotesque' as two types of humour typical of the Irish comic tradition (along with the fantastic), the essay discusses the cultural and anthropological matrix of the Irish macabre through examples from contemporary Irish literature, focusing in particular on novels by Patrick McCabe and John Banville.

Using a blend of statistical analysis with field survery among native Irish speakers, Reg Hindley explores the reasons for the decline of the Irish language and investigates the relationships between geographical environment and language retention. He puts Irish into a broader European context as a European minority language, and assesses its present position and prospects.

The Evolution of Funerary Ritual in Urbanizing China -- Belief in Karma and Mokṣa at the End of Life in India- Death and the Afterlife in Japan -- Return to Nature? Secularism and Politics of Death Space in Hong Kong -- Death and Dying: Belief, Fear and Ritual in Vietnamese Culture -- Negotiating Traditions and Modernity: Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore -- The Bureaucratic Professionalization of Funeral Rites in Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery -- Death and Burial Practices in Contemporary Zulu Culture, South Africa -- Death in Botswana: Life Among the Ashes -- Ancestors and Death: From West Africa to Southwest Europe -- Living Coffins and Death Among the Ga of Ghana -- The Yoruba of Nigeria and the Ontology of Death and Burial -- Transformation of Funeral Rituals in Togo -- Rituals Around Life and Death in Mexico; The Day of the Dead -- Continuity and Ruptures in Brazilian Funeral Rites -- The Right to a Dignified Death in Argentina -- Superstar-Saints and Wandering Souls: The Cemetery as a Cultural Hotspot in Latin American Cities -- He taonga tuku iho: Indigenous End of Life and Death Care Customs of New Zealand Māori -- Communicating with the Dead in an Australian Aboriginal Culture: The Tiwi from Melville and Bathurst Islands -- Death and Dying in American Indian Cultures -- The Beauty of the Afterlife Among the Inuit of Nunavut -- Eternity Calling: Modernity and the Revival of Death and the Afterlife

A pioneering comparative study of migrant death markers across the British and Irish worlds and what they can tell us about notions of 'home'Sets out an innovative agenda for comparative analysis of death markers in different parts of the formal and informal British EmpireProvides analyses based on hundreds of thousands of gravestones and memorial markers in the UK and Ireland, Australasia, Asia, Africa and the AmericasInvestigates the effects of religious identities in death and how they differ between memorials in Britain and IrelandAs British and Irish migrants sought new lives in the Caribbean, Asia, North America and Australasia, they left a trail of physical remains where settlement occurred. Between the 17th and 20th centuries, gravestones and elaborate epitaphs documented identity and attachment to their old and new worlds. This book expands upon earlier examination of cultural imperialism to reveal how individuals, kinship groups and occupational connections identified with place and space over time.With analyses based on gravestones and memorial markers in the UK and Ireland, Australasia, Asia, Africa and the Americas, the contributors explore how this evidence can inform 21st-century ideas about the attachments that British and Irish migrants had to 'home' – in both life and death.The book explores aspects of sociolinguistic difference evident in death markers and offers some insights into how growing literacy amongst migrant communities shaped the form of grave epitaphs. It expands upon earlier analyses of cultural imperialism to see how individual families and kinship groups identified with place and space over time and discusses how post-medieval archaeology from a range of death landscapes highlight difference rather than uniformity – including influences by Dutch, Jewish, Muslim and non-religious norms upon memorialisation practices. It also reveals how women and children, often marginalised voices in imperial scholarship, were as likely to be provided with more elaborate death markers than their male counterparts and challenges ideas of chain migration by demonstrating that families often moved to different, rather than similar, destinations overseas

"With intense and violent portrayals of death becoming ever more common on television and in cinema and the growth of death-centric movies, series, texts, songs and video clips attracting a wide and enthusiastic global reception, we might well ask whether death has ceased to be a taboo. What makes thanatic themes so desirable in popular culture? Do representations of the macabre and gore perpetuate or sublimate violent desires? Has contemporary popular culture removed our unease with death? Can social media help us to cope with our mortality, or can music and art present death as an aesthetic phenomenon? This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the discussion of the social, cultural, aesthetic and theoretical aspects of the ways in which in popular culture understands, represents and manages death, bringing together contributions from around the world focused on television, cinema, popular literature, social media and the internet, art, music and advertising"--

The Irish publican has played a hugely significant role in the social, economic, political and literary life of Ireland. As a country that is synonymous with pubs, it's ironic that the role these men and women have played in facilitating our culture of community interaction and drinking customs has received relatively little attention. As we approach the first anniversary of the opening of Irish pubs on Good Friday, it's worth reflecting on their status in an ever-changing Ireland.