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Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation. By Paul Binski. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 1996. Pp. 224. $39.95.)
This "essay" on art, religion, society, the body and ritual" resembles, in many ways,T. S. R. Boase's Death in the Middle Ages (New York, 1972). Both address general readers and students; the quality and diversity of their illustrations is comparable; and each has eleven fine color plates. What differentiates them is textual. For the most part, Boase let his photographs of memorials to the dead and depictions of the afterlife, funerals, the dance of death, and the ars moriendi, speak for themselves. He confined his analysis to an occasional indication of historical trends, and ended with a dismissive remark about the medieval "debasement of things spiritual to anthropomorphic crudities." Paul Binski has more to say,...