Philippe Ariès was a French historian who focused on the history of family and childhood, and notably on the transformation of attitudes towards death in the Western world. He described himself as a "right-wing anarchist." His work, which often explored daily life, was at times better known in the English-speaking world than in France itself. He is recognized for acknowledging childhood as a social construction and for founding the history of childhood as a serious field of study. He is also remembered for his research into the history of attitudes toward death and dying, which he also viewed as social constructs.
This remarkable book -- the fruit of almost two decades of study -- traces in compelling fashion the changes in Western attitudes toward death and dying from the earliest Christian times to the present day. A truly landmark study, The Hour of Our Death reveals a pattern of gradually developing evolutionary stages in our perceptions of life in relation to death, each stage representing a virtual redefinition of human nature. -- Provided by publisher
The second volume of A History of Private Life is a treasure-trove of rich and colorful detail culled from an astounding variety of sources. This absorbing "secret epic" constructs a vivid picture of peasant and patrician life in the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. All the mystery, earthiness and romance of the Middle Ages are captured in this panorama of everyday life. The evolving concepts of intimacy are explored--from the semi-obscure eleventh century through the first stirrings of the Renaissance world in the fifteenth century. Color and black-and-white illustrations
First of the widely celebrated and sumptuously illustrated series, this book reveals in intimate detail what life was really like in the ancient world. Behind the vast panorama of the pagan Roman empire, the reader discovers the intimate daily lives of citizens and slaves--from concepts of manhood and sexuality to marriage and the family, the roles of women, chastity and contraception, techniques of childbirth, homosexuality, religion, the meaning of virtue, and the separation of private and public spaces.The emergence of Christianity in the West and the triumph of Christian morality with its emphasis on abstinence, celibacy, and austerity is startlingly contrasted with the profane and undisciplined private life of the Byzantine Empire. Using illuminating motifs, the authors weave a rich, colorful fabric ornamented with the results of new research and the broad interpretations that only masters of the subject can provide.
AriA]s 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
Was wir Kindheit nennen, hat es nicht immer gegeben. Die Abgrenzung zwischen Kindern und Erwachsenen hat das Mittelalter nicht gekannt: Kinder lebten, sobald sie sich allein fortbewegen und verständlich machen konnten, mit den Erwachsenen, waren kleine Erwachsene. Was wir »Familie« nennen - die Gemeinschaft von Eltern und Kindern -, entwickelte sich in Europa erst im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert allmählich aus den größeren Sippen- und Stammesverbänden; sie wird dann zu einer moralischen Institution. Diese und andere grundlegende und oft überraschende Erkenntnisse gewinnt Ariès aus seinem Studium der sozialen, rechtlichen und kulturellen Entwicklung der Familie und der Erziehung. Er findet sein Material nicht in den Theorien und Programmschriften und den Äußerungen der Maßgebenden, sondern hauptsächlich in den vielfältigen, oft stillen Zeugnissen des Alltagslebens aller Volksschichten.
»Privates Leben ist keine Naturtatsache; es ist geschichtliche Wirklichkeit, die von den einzelnen Gesellschaften in unterschiedlicher Weise konstruiert wird. Es gibt nicht das private Leben mit ein für allemal festgelegten Schranken nach außen; was es gibt, ist die - selber veränderliche - Zuschreibung menschlichen Handelns zur privaten oder zur öffentlichen Sphäre. ... Die Geschichte des privaten Lebens beginnt mit der Geschichte seiner Markierungen.« Antoine Prost »Diese große, eindrucksvolle Unternehmung wird man einmal zu den fortdauernden Werken der Historiographie in unserer Zeit zählen.« "Times Literary Supplement"
