Although today in France church attendance is minimal, when death occurs many families still cling to religious rites. In exploring this common reaction to one of the most painful aspects of existence, Thomas Kselman turns to nineteenth-century French beliefs about death and the afterlife not only to show how deeply rooted the cult of the dead is in one Western society, but how death and the behavior of mourners have been politicized in the modern world. Drawing on sermons preached in rural and urban parishes, folktales, and accounts of seances, the author vividly re-creates the social and cultural context in which most French people responded to death and dealt with anxieties about the self and its survival. Inspired mainly by Catholicism, beliefs about death provided a social basis for moral order throughout the nineteenth century and were vulnerable to manipulation by public officials and clergy. Kselman shows, however, that by mid-century the increase in urbanization, capitalism, family privacy, and expressed religious differences generated diverse attitudes toward death, causing funerals to evolve from Catholic neighborhood rituals into personalized symbolic events for Catholics and dissenters alike--the civil burial of Victor Hugo being perhaps the greatest symbol of rebellion. Kselman's discussion of the growth of commercial funerals and innovations in cemetery administration illuminates a new struggle for control over funeral arrangements, this time involving businessmen, politicians, families, and clergy. This struggle in turn demonstrates the importance of these events for defining social identity. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. Kselman (history, Notre Dame) focuses on 19th-century France in this wide-ranging study. After an opening essay on what demographic studies reveal about the causes and numbers of deaths in modern France, Kselman turns to the way death is treated in folk religion, Catholicism, and such secular alternatives as positivism and spiritism. The second half of the book is a detailed analysis of the French funeral trade, with a brief coda on Courbet's Burial at Ornans. The nearly 75 pages of notes citing hundreds of published sources and archival materials are suggestive of the breadth and depth of Kselman's research. While not entirely successful in pulling the various strands it introduces into a compelling thesis, this book provides many intriguing glimpses into the diverse ways that death reverberates through French religion, law, art, literature, and mores. - Steve Gowler, Wofford Coll. Lib., Spartanburg, S.C. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. "Such is the wealth of research and scholarship in this intriguing book that there is almost enough for several volumes. . . . [I]t is a volume of unusual richness, and is meticulous in its documentation. Above all, it is sensitive to the complexities and paradoxes." ― Journal of Religious History Used Book in Good Condition