Living Death in Medieval French and English Literature

Medieval literature is full of figures who sit at the boundary between life and death. Some dead people return to make demands on the living, while others foresee, arrange or even long for their own deaths. Jane Gilbert's study takes these figures seriously as a literary device.

The book looks at how certain medieval texts, in both French and English, use the living dead to think through existential, ethical and political problems. Gilbert shows the links between the two literatures in the way they handle these figures.

Scholars of medieval literature, and students of the French and English traditions, will find the study a focused, original account of a recurring theme.

Bibliographic details: published by Cambridge University Press, with the ISBN-13 9781107003835.