Volume 21, Number 11 · June 27, 1974
Giving New Life to Death
By Robert Darnton
Piété baroque et déchristianisation en Provence au XVIIIe siècle: Les attitudes devant la mort d'après les clauses des testaments
by Michel Vovelle
Plon (Paris), 697 pp., 50F
By soaring over centuries, Philippe Ariès in Western Attitudes toward Death (reviewed in NYR, June 13, 1974) managed to sketch the entire topography of this unfamiliar subject, the history of death. Michel Vovelle burrowed deeply into one small corner of it, sifted through his material with extraordinary care, and came up with a work of pure gold. His Piété baroque et déchristianisation en Provence au XVIIIe siècle belongs to the opposite extreme in historical writing from Ariès's essay. It is an enormous, dense doctoral thesis on attitudes toward death in eighteenth-century Provence.
Review, 3324 words
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