Talk:Revenant

message: There's a footnotes that reads: "Vampires, in the modern sense, were first "invented" by Lord Byron in the early 19th century. Newburgh and Maps descriptions arguably have some modern "vampiric" characteristics."
What are you basing this on? What do you mean "modern"? There is LOTS of vampire folklore that predates the early 19th century and that is very similar to modern fictional representations. It seems like the footnote is making artificial distinctions here that don't hold up. DreamGuy 02:40, May 17, 2005 (UTC)
:Our modern notions of vampires are, I believe, pretty much a product of the Romanticist writers, as our Vampire article says. The word vampire first appears in the 18th century. Certainly, as the article shows, the concept of a revenant is far older, but these were not "vampires" as we know them today. That is the point of the footnote, there were not "vampires" in the Middle Ages as we know them, it is anarchonistic to use the term, it had not even been invented yet. Stbalbach 04:27, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This may be the oldest conversation I've continued here, but, it has to be said: that's complete nonsense. Trying to claim that folklore that featured characters *exactly* like vampires couldn't really be vampires because the name didn't exist yet is just silly. Words are created to name ideas that already exist. The concept of vampires already existed for millennia before the modern English word vampire came along. DreamGuy (talk) 03:13, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Footnote

message: *anomalous phenomenon - this term has no place in an article about medieval history. It is anachronistic. There were no "scientific bodies" of knowledge in the medieval model of the universe.
*This sentence makes no sense: "A medieval revenant was" .. there is no such thing as a "medieval revenant", except in a rhetorical sense, the title of the article is simply to disambiguate. In the Middle Ages they didnt call them "medieval revenants", they were called "revenants".
*"returned to the physical plane".. again, anarchonistic. The notion of the real world and physical plane in the Middle Ages was not the same as today, those terms and concepts simply didnt exist, the medieval model of the world was very different from ours today. It is frameing the concept of renevants according to modern terms and ideas, which would be entirely unknown to people in the Middle Ages. 
Re: this comment: "previous was in sub-standard WP format & had easter egg link, inter alia"  - no idea what that means. -- Stbalbach 05:48, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anachronistic terms 

message: Do we have any other medieval accounts but those from England? Newburgh and Map's stories seem quite isolated, regarding their characteristics (that's why vampire enthusiasts regard them as "unique" descriptions of vampirism, without parallel in France and Germany). If it's a purely English 12th century phenomenon, that should be mentioned, and perhaps the whole article should be re-named. --194.145.161.227 13:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Santa Compaña, the procession of the dead and the Wild Hunt are similar but they are more impersonal, should they be mentioned? --Error (talk) 22:24, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

text: There are a number of accounts of revenants in Old Norse sagas, which are presented as if true stories, and thus might be candidates for expanding the list. There are two such accounts in Grettis Saga alone. B.Bryant (talk) 20:58, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Only English? 

message: A further reversion without constructive changes will result in this template:  Tuoreco 11:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nah, the article is a history article - revenants were not fictional for people in the Middle Ages (it says: A revenant in the Middle Ages) - saying they are fictional stories is confusing, wrong and a modernism. This is how historians write about it, it's pretty clear and self-evident that this is a history article and that it makes no claim that revenants actually are real. -- Stbalbach 15:13, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok qualified as "legendary". The original wording you've uncovered in the article history was awkward as an opening sentence, since the first word is supposed to be the title of the article in bold, and not sure if it was accurate ("commonly believed").  -- Stbalbach 18:23, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  fiction 

message: I have a problem with the statement, "Fear of the walking dead is older than the oldest literature." 
Unless there is some sort of non-literary documentation, then there is surely no basis to make this claim. 
(It is of course likely that anything documented by literature existed at least slightly before the documentations, but if this statement is meant only in that sense then it hardly needs stating.)
Further, the citation of the Ishtar quote seems of questionable relevance to me. That there was a myth where a goddess threatened to return the dead to the land of the living, hardly equates to there having been a belief or fear of the dead visiting the living on other occasions. This is like using the myth of Prometheus to support an assertion that the ancient Greeks had a fear of having their livers eaten by eagles.
This might belong in some more general article about historical conceptions of the dead, but it is a stretch to bring into this article about Revenants.--Ericjs (talk) 23:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: What, no Neolithic and Bronze Age practices that can only be interpreted as keeping the dead in their secure resting place? With all our reading (!) we come up with nothing of this? --Wetman (talk) 23:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Ericjs about the unsupported statement about prehistorical beliefs, so I removed it. I also agree with Ericjs that the literature references are not necessarily relevant, so I have removed them as well. In response to Wetman, please provide a citation; I don't know much about prehistoric practices. Citations would need to show that the practices you refer to are only interpreted as implying a fear of revenants, or of something close enough to revenants that this article would be a good place to mention them. --Allen (talk) 18:16, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

text: Thank you for putting the text I removed here on the talk page, Wetman. I definitely should have done that. It seems to me that what you're saying is that you consider a revenant to be any "visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living". This article, as well as an admittedly casual internet search, suggest to me that "revenant" is not a term used to denote any entity that fits that description, but rather is used to denote a subset of such entities as imagined by certain cultures and literary traditions. It seems to me that these literary quotes might be more appropriate for an article such as "undead", which unlike "revenant" seems to be used as an umbrella term for any entity that meets some loose criteria, regardless of cultural context. But I'm clearly not an expert, so I'm open to evidence or argument that I'm mistaken. --Allen (talk) 03:59, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  older than the oldest literature? 

message: : The word "revenant" is derived from the Latin word, revenans, "returning" (see also the related French verb "revenir", meaning "to come back").
I have no Latin grammar reference within reach, but I think the Latin word would be reveniens not revenans (it's not an a-stem verb).  The French equivalent is revenant, though. —Tamfang (talk) 00:04, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  etymology 

message: This article doesn't seem to account for an entire class of revenants that really have nothing to do with terrorizing the living. At least in early Irish literature, the revenant has returned from the dead, or more usually lived an exceedingly long life, in order to fill in the gaps of history before writing. Some examples that come immediately to mind are the Acallam na Senórach and the Recovery of the Táin Bó Cuailnge. Fintan mac Bochra is a revenant who returns time and again in various guises in order to pass along the tales found in the Lebor Gabála (Book of Invasions), which detail the earliest settlements of Ireland from the time of the flood. 
Some references include:
1. Emma Nic Cárthaigh, “Surviving the Flood: Revenants and Antediluvian Lore in Medieval Irish Texts,” in Transmission and Transformation in the Middle Ages : Texts and Contexts, ed. Kathy Cawsey and Jason Harris (Dublin: Four Courts, 2007), 40–64.
2. Hill, Eleanor, "The Hawk of Achill or the Legend of the Oldest Animals," Folklore, 43 (1932), 386.
3. R.A. Stewart MacAllister, ed., Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book Of The Taking Of Ireland,  6 vols. (Dublin: The Educational Company of Ireland for the Irish Texts Society, 1956).
4. Ann Dooley and Harry Roe, eds., Tales of the Elders of Ireland (Acallam Na Senorach) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
5. Thomas Kinsella, tran., The Táin: From the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).
I'm working on a thesis on early Irish literary history at the moment, but if someone else would like to take this up, I'd be happy to help where I can. If not I can work on it when I have more time. Also, this is my first post here, so please pardon if I haven't done it right :)
Hystorically (talk) 14:56, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Harmless Revenants 

message: Rice uses the term to refer to vampires who were buried and, unable to feed, became brain-damaged vampires in contrast to the variety that could speak. Should this be discussed in the article?--64.134.237.32 (talk) 19:07, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interview With the Vampire Uses Term 

message: A significant part of the article depends upon a single source, "Medieval Vampire Stories In England". That source is being used to describe what medievalists as a whole supposedly believe. I find no record of any source by that name. "Unearthing Medieval Vampire Stories In England: Fragments From De Nugis Curialium and Historia Rerum Anglicarum" by Jason Nolan, which is listed as "published online". There is no indication that this is someone who is in any way an expert on the topic, and even if he were he could not speak for all medievalists. Another site online says the writing was a "draft for the Third World Conference on Dracula" by Jason Nolan of the University of Toronto, but with no info about his connection to that university. The only Jason Nolan I found that seems like it might be a match is someone who is listed as being "assistant professor in the School of Early Childhood Education" at a different school in Canada but who had some again unspecified role with the University of Toronto. By now it should be more than clear that this essay was written by someone with no qualifications as an expert in any topic related to this encyclopedia article and it was not professionally published. I don't know who originally came up with it to be listed here, but that person didn't even get the title right and knew nothing else about it, or withheld that information to make it sound more reliable than it is. 
Looking for suggestions on how to rewrite this section to remove the bad information... if I don't get ideas I'll take a stab at it myself later. DreamGuy (talk) 03:26, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Very poor source making overly broad (and potentially even totally baseless) claims 

message: There is a corresponding article in Portuguese: Morto-vivo. 189.92.197.74 (talk) 04:29, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article in Portuguese