Volume 21, Issue 1 (2008) Death/La Mort

"Live to Die, Die to Live": An Introduction

In the eighteenth century, people were meant to live with death in view, a prominent theme in popular devotional literature of the period. Jeremy Taylor, in his much reprinted The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651), advises that we "make Death as present to us, our own Death, dwelling and dress'd in all its Pomp of Fancy, and proper Circumstances." So too William Sherlock, in his Practical Discourse Concerning Death (1689), exhorts good Christians "to take a timely leave of the World, and to withdraw from the noise and business of it ... to direct their Face wholly to that World whither they are going." The essays in this collection all elaborate upon this eighteenth-century preoccupation, which is proclaimed in the common motto embossed or engraved on mourning rings: "Live to Die, Die to Live."

More of this introductory essay to the special issue "Death/La Mort" is available online (see below), and you may purchase individual articles from this special issue in electronic format: http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/120884/2