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The Dominion of the Dead
 
 

The Dominion of the Dead (Paperback)

by RP Harrison (Author) "One of the blessings of our planet, along with life itself, is that it allows for the disposal of its dead ..." (more)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Chicago University Press (7 Jun 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0226317935
  • ISBN-13: 978-0226317939
  • Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.8 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 122,158 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Review

"This is the best book ever written about the cultural meaning of burial, our need to remember the dead (hence our need for history), and the deeper than etymological link between the human and the humus." - Jonathan Bate, Times Literary Supplement; "A guide to the care of self (and society) through an analysis of the care for the dead, written in a manner that is inimitable, provocative and intellectually compelling." - Publishers Weekly; "A significant and learned treatise on something that should concern all of us." - Jack Matthews, Washington Times; "A penetrating look into the realm of the dead." - Bernadette Murphy, Los Angeles Times Book Review; "Harrison... has a rare poetic intelligence that does not shrink from speculative immensity.... In a kind of literary seance, the voices of the dead - poets like Swinburne and Homer, writers like Conrad and Joyce, philosophers like Vico and Heidegger - shape the text.... By the end one begins to think differently about the living as well as the dead." - Edward Rothstein, New York Times; "A daring and ambitious book.... The subject is one in which the reader participates, and it will not end as long as there is someone to ponder it." - W. S. Merwin, New York Review of Books"


Product Description

In The Dominion of the Dead, Robert Pogue Harrison explores the many places where the dead cohabit the world of the living - the graves, images, literature, architecture, and monuments that house the dead in their afterlife among us. This elegantly conceived work devotes particular attention to the practice of burial. Harrison contends that we bury our dead to humanize the lands where we build our present and imagine our future. Through inspired readings of major writers and thinkers such as Vico, Virgil, Dante, Pater, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Rilke, he argues that the buried dead form an essential foundation where future generations can retrieve their past, while burial grounds provide an important bedrock where past generations can preserve their legacy for the unborn. A profound meditation on how the thought of death shapes the communion of the living, and a work of enormous scope, intellect, and imagination, this book speaks to all who have suffered grief and loss.

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4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars In the tradition of Fustel de Coulanges, 13 Jan 2006
By JasonC (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
This is really a book on philosophic anthropology, though it takes the form of a series of literary essays. Harrison has been influenced by Heidegger and the French 19th century classicist Fustel de Coulanges, and before them Vico. He has some frankly stunning reflections on the links between human thought about mortality and afterlife, and the mechanisms of human tradition. Against Heidegger, he insists that death is always first experienced as someone else's, as the ancestor's. That the power of ancestors founds human culture, and pervades its most basic rites.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars While Buying This ..., 19 Feb 2006
By P. Loebig "paul42327" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I was introduced to the author by reading credits in a Michael Marshall novel. I bought this book new, then I went out and bought his FORESTS: THE SHADOW OF CIVILISATION [5 Star] as well.
This is academic material, but readily accessible to the layman.
It explains why we are here. It explains what the dead did for us, and what we must do for those yet to come. It explains the links that bind us all: past, present and future.
Readit - you'll be ordering Forests as well, and THAT will change the way you look at the world.
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