Abstract
Culture shapes experiences of bereavement; it also shapes perceptions of the natural world. Cemeteries, painting and poetry regularly use nature to offer solace for grief in historically Protestant and in secular cultures, but rarely in Catholic cultures. Why?
Drawing on Draper (1967) I argue that, from the 18c right through to the 21c, Protestants and secularists, being unable to pray for the deceased’s soul, shifted their attention to the mourner’s grief. Lacking Catholic rites for the dead, they turned elsewhere to express grief and find comfort. One place to which they turned was nature - variously portrayed as peaceful, beautiful, lonely, unable to feel, dead yet capable of living again (winter & summer), decomposing yet growing anew (autumn & spring), transient, eternal, enveloping (as in the Germanic/Nordic forest), or (in 21c ecology) suffering. Examples are given from a range of Western countries, chiefly from cemeteries but also from poetry and painting.
Drawing on Draper (1967) I argue that, from the 18c right through to the 21c, Protestants and secularists, being unable to pray for the deceased’s soul, shifted their attention to the mourner’s grief. Lacking Catholic rites for the dead, they turned elsewhere to express grief and find comfort. One place to which they turned was nature - variously portrayed as peaceful, beautiful, lonely, unable to feel, dead yet capable of living again (winter & summer), decomposing yet growing anew (autumn & spring), transient, eternal, enveloping (as in the Germanic/Nordic forest), or (in 21c ecology) suffering. Examples are given from a range of Western countries, chiefly from cemeteries but also from poetry and painting.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Cultural, Existential and Phenomenological Dimensions of Grief Experience |
| Editors | Allan Køster, Esther Kofod |
| Place of Publication | London |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Chapter | 15 |
| Pages | 229-243 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781003099420 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780367568115, 9780367568122 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2022 |