
Death Is a Festival
Funeral Rites and Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Brazil
The University of North Carolina Press
Published on 30. June 2003
Book
Paperback/Softback
400 pages
978-0-8078-5445-7 (ISBN)
Description
This award-winning social history of death and funeral rites during the early decades of Brazil's independence from Portugal focuses on the Cemiterada movement in Salvador, capital of the province of Bahia. The book opens with a lively account of the popular riot that ensued when, in 1836, the government condemned the traditional burial of bodies inside Catholic church buildings and granted a private company a monopoly over burials. This episode is used by Reis to examine the customs of death and burial in Bahian society, explore the economic and religious conflicts behind the move for funerary reforms and the maintenance of traditional rituals of dying, and understand how people dealt with new concerns sparked by modernization and science. Viewing culture within its social context, he illuminates the commonalities and differences that shaped death and its rituals for rich and poor, men and women, slaves and masters, adults and children, foreigners and Brazilians. This translation makes the book, originally published in Brazil in 1993, available in English for the first time.
Reviews / Votes
"A pithy, nuanced, fluent translation that does justice to this well-written book." - John Charles Chasteen, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillMore details
Series
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
682 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8078-5445-7 (9780807854457)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
11/2003
The University of North Carolina Press
€29.49
Available for download
Person
Joao Jose Reis is professor of history at Universidade Federal da Bahia in Brazil. He is author of Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia. H. Sabrina Gledhill is a translator in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
Translation