The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying (Routledge Religion Companions) - Tapa dura

A remarkably impressive collection of various points of view on death and afterlife. The joining of conventional religious worldviews with the latest research coming out of psychical science - including the near-death experience, children’s reincarnational memories, and ghosts the world over - is especially noteworthy. A professor teaching a course on death couldn’t do better than selecting this as his or her one and only text for the course. Stafford Betty, California State University, USA.

Few issues apply universally to people as poignantly as death and dying. All religions address concerns with death from the handling of human remains, to defining death, to suggesting what happens after life. The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying provides readers with an overview of the study of death and dying. Questions of death, mortality, and more recently of end-of-life care, have long been important ones and scholars from a range of fields have approached the topic in a number of ways. Comprising over fifty-two chapters from a team of international contributors, the companion covers:

• funerary and mourning practices;
• concepts of the afterlife;
• psychical issues associated with death and dying;
• clinical and ethical issues;
• philosophical issues;
• death and dying as represented in popular culture.

This comprehensive collection of essays will bring together perspectives from fields as diverse as history, philosophy, literature, psychology, archaeology and religious studies, while including various religious traditions, including established religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as well as new or less widely known traditions such as the Spiritualist Movement, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and Raëlianism. The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, philosophy and literature.