The Songs of the Dead: Poetry, Drama, and Ancient Death Rituals of Japan

1982 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshio Akima
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Death Rituals ◽  
Religious Idea ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Verse Forms

The author reconstructs the religious idea and ritual that lie behind the “Songs of the Dead.” The three songs attributed to Empress Saimei in the Nihonshoki (nos. 119–121) are interpreted as sung by a dead person's spirit sailing to the nether world. They must have been handed down by the Asobi-be—shamans who appeased dead emperors' spirits—because these and other funeral songs in the Kojiki use similar verse forms. The Ryō no Shūge says that the Asobi-be's services involved two persons called Negi and Yoshi. Negi appeased the spirit who possessed Yoshi; the empress's songs must originally have been sung by Yoshi. The ritual behind the “Songs of the Dead” also helps us to understand the origins of Nō, especially of mugen nō, and to perceive the connection between Nō and the development of Kabuki in the early seventeenth century.

Death Across the Border and the Prospects of Improved People to People Relationships

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrey Damaledo
Keyword(s):  
Nation State ◽  
Forced Displacement ◽  
Death Rituals ◽  
Timor Leste ◽  
The Dead ◽  
State Boundaries ◽  
Violent Conflicts ◽  
West Timor

The chapter explores the meanings of death among East Timorese who are living in Indonesian West Timor. It particularly focuses on death and transnational relationships, as increasingly East Timorese in West Timor are opting to transfer the deceased across the border to be buried in their home villages in Timor-Leste. At the same time, however, there are other East Timorese who insist on burying the dead permanently in West Timor. This phenomenon, the chapter argues, demonstrates not only the enlivening ties between people and the dead but also the prospects of death rituals for improving relationships between East Timorese divided by violent conflicts, past atrocities, forced displacement, different political allegiances, and nation-state boundaries.

Metaphorical eternity in action

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-270
Author(s):  
Mohsen Bakhtiar
Keyword(s):  
Physical Reality ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Death Rituals ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Psychological Experiences

Conceptual metaphors can be made real in culture and structure many areas of human experience in nonlinguistic ways (Kövecses 2005). In this paper, relying on a cognitive account of metaphor, I attempted to find out in which ways death metaphors manifest themselves in Iranian culture. Analyzing the rituals of death in Iran, it was revealed that Iranians rely on a set of basic concetual metaphors to conceptualize the taboo of death. Heavily motivated by religious instructions, the whole scenario of death is conceptualized in terms of human physical and psychological experiences. In addition to the event of death, which is conceptualized via the highly generic DEATH IS LIFE metaphor, in this culture, an important mapping of this metaphor, that is, THE DEAD ARE EMOTIONAL BEINGS, is extensively realized and enacted, which provides a unique subsystem for making euphemistic reference to death. Furthermore, the paper comes to the conclusion that most of the entailments of the source domains and some of the source domains turn into social-physical reality. The whole system of death rituals as structured by metaphors imply that we metaphorically never die.

Traders and Customs Officials in 1660S Iskenderun

1991 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 107-121
Author(s):  
Suraiya Faroqhi
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Commercial Activity ◽  
Modern City ◽  
Specific Category ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Business District ◽  
Public Bath

Present-day Iskenderun (Alexandrette) is a purely modern city. Throughout the pre-Tanzimat period, settlement in this locality was insignificant, and the name of Iskenderun denoted a landing stage (iskele), rather than a town or city. When the traveller Evliya Çelebi passed through Iskenderun in the middle of the seventeenth century, he noted the fact that there was no business district or even shop-lined street, no khan and no public bath (Evliya Çelebi, 1314/1896-97 to 1938, Vol. 3, pp. 46-47; Vol. 9, p. 367 ff.). Moreover, since the few inhabitants were all non-Muslims, there was no mosque, but Evliya did not notice any churches either. Thus seventeenth-century Iskenderun belonged to a very specific category of settlement found in other parts of the Ottoman Empire as well as in medieval northern Europe or seventeenth-century Mexico: very few people lived there permanently, but during the seasonal arrival of ships, the settlements came to life, only to empty again during the “dead season.” In the present study, we will attempt to sketch the commercial activity that went on in Iskenderun during the second half of the seventeenth century and explain why the place, in spite of an advantageous geographical location, did not develop into a town.

Du Bartas' Legacy in England and Scotland

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Auger
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Edmund Spenser ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Anne Bradstreet ◽  
Religious Narrative ◽  
Lucy Hutchinson ◽  
Verse Forms ◽  
Creative Vision

Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas (1544–90) is an essential figure for understanding the diversity and strength of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetry. His works were read, translated, and imitated more widely than any other non-biblical literary work in early modern England and Scotland, leading Scottish and French literary culture to shape the development of English epic poetry and inspire new kinds of popular devotional verse. Thanks to James VI and I’s support, Du Bartas’ scriptural poems became emblems of international Protestantism that were cherished even more highly in England and Scotland than on the continent. His creative vision helped inexperienced devotional writers to find a voice as well as providing a model that Protestant poets (like Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Anne Bradstreet, John Milton, and Lucy Hutchinson) would resist, transform, and, ultimately, reject. This long-needed book examines Du Bartas’ legacy in England and Scotland, sensitive to the different cultural situations in which his works were read, discussed, and creatively imitated. The first part shows how James VI of Scotland played a decisive role in the Huguenot poet’s reception history, culminating in Josuah Sylvester’s translation Devine Weekes and Workes (1605). The second examines seventeenth-century divine epic, religious narrative, and popular devotional verse forms that reworked Du Bartas’ poetic structures to introduce meditative and figurative components that provided new possibilities for imaginative expression.

In My Time of Dying

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Over Time

This book is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara. Focusing on a region that is now present-day Ghana, the book explores mortuary cultures and the relationship between the living and the dead over a 400-year period spanning the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. The book considers many questions from the African historical perspective, including why people die and where they go after death, how the dead are buried and mourned to ensure they continue to work for the benefit of the living, and how perceptions and experiences of death and the ends of life have changed over time. From exuberant funeral celebrations encountered by seventeenth-century observers to the brilliantly conceived designer coffins of the late twentieth century, the book shows that the peoples of Ghana have developed one of the world's most vibrant cultures of death. The book explores the unfolding background of that culture through a diverse range of issues, such as the symbolic power of mortal remains and the dominion of hallowed ancestors, as well as the problem of bad deaths, vile bodies, and vengeful ghosts. The book reconstructs a vast timeline of death and the dead, from the era of the slave trade to the coming of Christianity and colonial rule to the rise of the modern postcolonial nation. With an array of written and oral sources, the book richly adds to an understanding of how the dead continue to weigh on the shoulders of the living.

The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The State ◽  
East Timor ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Considerable Time ◽  
Death Rituals ◽  
Timor Leste ◽  
Grassroots Initiatives ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Dynamic Interplay

During the 24-year Indonesian occupation of East Timor, thousands of people died, or were killed, in circumstances that did not allow the required death rituals to be performed. Since the nation’s independence, families and communities have invested considerable time, effort and resources in fulfilling their obligations to the dead. These obligations are imbued with urgency because the dead are ascribed agency and can play a benevolent or malevolent role in the lives of the living. These grassroots initiatives run, sometimes critically, in parallel with official programs that seek to transform particular dead bodies into public symbols of heroism, sacrifice and nationhood. The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste focuses on the dynamic interplay between the potent presence of the dead in everyday life and their symbolic usefulness to the state. It underlines how the dead shape relationships amongst families, communities and the nation-state, and open an important window into — are in fact pivotal to — processes of state and nation formation.

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