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The rule of funereal rituals in secular society
MACHÁČEK, Stanislav
The role of funeral rituals in secular society. The thesis discusses the importance of funeral rituals in a secularized society, enlightens the importance of funeral rituals in archaic and traditional cultures and in present time. In the first chapter the basic concepts are defined - ritual and funerary ritual, on which the work is based. Further attention is paid to the history of burying within our territory and the form of funerary rituals in Czech folk tradition, including peculiarities in the way of burying in the past. The history of burial and funeral rituals is followed by a description of funerary rite types and burial methods in the present. Then the thesis details the changes of approach in the secular funeral rites in the 20th century and the funeral rites of selected ethnic minorities in the Czech Republic. The penultimate chapter deals with the rituals and monuments of the deceased. The thesis is concluded with a chapter on the importance of funeral rites in a secularized society.
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: The Interpretation of Funeral Rituals in Czechoslovakia in 1950s
Tesař, Jan ; Randák, Jan (advisor) ; Kopeček, Michal (referee)
(in English) The main topic of this thesis is both analysis and interpretation of the relationship between funeral rites, political power and society. Funeral rites are understood as a complex of performative, symbolic social acts, which are themselves comprised of various distinctive phases and signs. The meaning of these acts and signs is important because it can change the features and practice of the collective it is assigned to. The main purpose of this thesis is not only to perform a thick description of different kinds of communist funeral rite in the given time period but to interprate it in the wider social and cultural context as well. The concept of political religion as a heuristic tool was used in the thesis in order to distinguish an ambivalent nature of communist ideology which manifested itself in funeral rites. Funeral rites are analyzed as models for human behavior, which represent key values and norms of communist ideology. At the same time, funeral rites are analyzed as forms of cultural management. That is the reason, why are put under scrutiny not only the rites which are significant for society as a whole but also the funeral rites of individual actors.
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The Puritan view of death: attitudes toward death and dying in Puritan New England
Holubová, Petra ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
The Puritan attitude toward death in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century New England was ambivalent and contained both terror at the possibility of eternal damnation and hope for deliverance. The joyful theme of the migratio ad Dominum resonated with the Saints only at times when they were convinced divine grace was actively working in their lives, but when they saw they were backsliding, the horror of death prevailed. Puritan anxiety about death was caused by tensions inherent in the doctrine of predestination, which implied man's dependence on God's inscrutability, and in the doctrine of assurance, which implied that self-doubt was more desirable than full assurance of salvation. What complicated any verification of the presence of grace was man's endless potential for self-deception. Memento mori gave urgency to the Puritan work ethic and the effective use of time. The anxiety about one's destiny began in early childhood when death and its ensuing horrors for the depraved were used as a means of religious instruction to provoke spiritual precocity and conversion. This early immersion into the discourse about death has been erroneously interpreted as a proof of the non-existence of childhood in Puritan New England. Deathbed scenes depicted in Puritan spiritual biographies were designed as examples...
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Burial Rituals
BOHOŇKOVÁ, Denisa
This work mainly deals with burial rituals and a way of handling with dead bodies from past times to the presence. The first chapter tries to define basic terms speci-fied by various authors. The second chapter deals with a description of burial ritu-als during present and past times. This chapter mainly focuses on the Czech tradi-tion and is completed by G. Maiell{\crq}s research on contemporary exploitation of crematoriums. The third part of the work deals with the burial rituals of pre-Christian cultures in Europe, especially Celtic, Germanic and Slavonic traditions. The fourth chapter focuses especially on the rituals of noneuropean cultures, e.g. Chinese or Islamic. The last part of this paper includes special ways of burying of dead bodies, e.g. children{\crq}s burials, burials of young people or dealing with dead bodies by unusual situations, e.g. during epidemic periods.
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