The idea of the walking dead in medieval historical texts with particular reference to the English examples
This thesis explores the origins and purpose of the stories about restless corpses appearing in the medieval Latin sources created in England between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries. By engaging with a wide variety of sources, including ancient texts, walking-dead stories created in medieva...
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Lancaster University
2020
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ftdatacite:10.17635/lancaster/thesis/1016 2023-05-15T16:50:55+02:00 The idea of the walking dead in medieval historical texts with particular reference to the English examples Ignatova, Polina 2020 https://dx.doi.org/10.17635/lancaster/thesis/1016 http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/the-idea-of-the-walking-dead-in-medieval-historical-texts-with-particular-reference-to-the-english-examples(b674afa2-0f22-48e2-9518-beed19f1bbba).html English unknown Lancaster University article-journal Text ScholarlyArticle 2020 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.17635/lancaster/thesis/1016 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z This thesis explores the origins and purpose of the stories about restless corpses appearing in the medieval Latin sources created in England between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries. By engaging with a wide variety of sources, including ancient texts, walking-dead stories created in medieval Europe and Iceland, early modern and modern collections of folk tales, medieval medical treatises, and excavation reports, this thesis endeavours to provide a new insight into the nature of the accounts about revenants appearing in medieval English sources. Walking-dead stories have been seen as the remnants of the pagan Germanic beliefs, the superstitions of the unlearned masses, which somehow found their way into the written narratives. By (1) studying these stories within the context of a wider variety of sources, in contrast to the previously accepted methodology of studying a walking-dead story only as a part of the work in which it appears, and (2) checking the available evidence for the existence of popular superstitions regarding the dangerous dead against a larger range of sources than has been done previously, this thesis challenges the traditional way of viewing the stories about wandering cadavers as originating from popular beliefs, and proposes and alternative point of view, namely, that walking-dead stories were composed by the learned authors on the basis of the earlier sources. Text Iceland DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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This thesis explores the origins and purpose of the stories about restless corpses appearing in the medieval Latin sources created in England between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries. By engaging with a wide variety of sources, including ancient texts, walking-dead stories created in medieval Europe and Iceland, early modern and modern collections of folk tales, medieval medical treatises, and excavation reports, this thesis endeavours to provide a new insight into the nature of the accounts about revenants appearing in medieval English sources. Walking-dead stories have been seen as the remnants of the pagan Germanic beliefs, the superstitions of the unlearned masses, which somehow found their way into the written narratives. By (1) studying these stories within the context of a wider variety of sources, in contrast to the previously accepted methodology of studying a walking-dead story only as a part of the work in which it appears, and (2) checking the available evidence for the existence of popular superstitions regarding the dangerous dead against a larger range of sources than has been done previously, this thesis challenges the traditional way of viewing the stories about wandering cadavers as originating from popular beliefs, and proposes and alternative point of view, namely, that walking-dead stories were composed by the learned authors on the basis of the earlier sources. |
format |
Text |
author |
Ignatova, Polina |
spellingShingle |
Ignatova, Polina The idea of the walking dead in medieval historical texts with particular reference to the English examples |
author_facet |
Ignatova, Polina |
author_sort |
Ignatova, Polina |
title |
The idea of the walking dead in medieval historical texts with particular reference to the English examples |
title_short |
The idea of the walking dead in medieval historical texts with particular reference to the English examples |
title_full |
The idea of the walking dead in medieval historical texts with particular reference to the English examples |
title_fullStr |
The idea of the walking dead in medieval historical texts with particular reference to the English examples |
title_full_unstemmed |
The idea of the walking dead in medieval historical texts with particular reference to the English examples |
title_sort |
idea of the walking dead in medieval historical texts with particular reference to the english examples |
publisher |
Lancaster University |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.17635/lancaster/thesis/1016 http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/the-idea-of-the-walking-dead-in-medieval-historical-texts-with-particular-reference-to-the-english-examples(b674afa2-0f22-48e2-9518-beed19f1bbba).html |
genre |
Iceland |
genre_facet |
Iceland |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.17635/lancaster/thesis/1016 |
_version_ |
1766041025754693632 |