Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present

David E. Stannard, Philippe Aries, Patricia M. Ranum

The American Historical Review · 1975 · 836 citations · 0 references

Concepts

Abstract

Aris traces Western man's attitudes toward mortality from the early medieval conception of death as the familiar collective destiny of the human race to the modern tendency, so pronounced in industrial societies, to hide death as if it were an embarrassing family secret. -- Newsweek