Title: Mapping mortality
First published: 1995
Description: This book is a cultural study of the ways men and women in early modern England confronted, accommodated, and paid tribute to mortal life and certain death. Drawing on prose and poetry, painting and statuary, social practices and religious rites, William Engel reopens central questions about Renaissance habits of thought.

He explores how the metaphorics of that period signaled and enacted a continual revelation of mortality: the death of the body (figured as a kind of vehicle) and the eternality of the soul (that which was to be transported).

Engel argues that early modern metaphorics was essentially mnemonic and emblematic, grounding itself in the relation of body and soul. Building on the work of Benjamin, Heidegger, Derrida, Baudrillard, and Eliade, the book provides contemporary readers with a key for recovering and understanding the critical assumptions underlying a mnemonically oriented principle of aesthetics.
Subjects: Arts, Renaissance, Death in literature, English literature, European influences, Funeral rites and ceremonies, History, History and criticism, Melancholy in literature, Memory in literature, Renaissance Arts, Social life and customs, English literature, history and criticism, early modern, 1500-1700, Great britain, social life and customs, English literature, foreign influences, Literature, English, Funeral Rites, Attitude to Death, Depression, In literature
Places: England
Time periods: 16th century, 17th century, Early modern, 1500-1700
LC classification: PR428.D4 E54 1995