The Book Prize Index

Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death Among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-century France

John McManners

Death and the Enlightenment is an unusual survey of the daily rituals, customs, and attitudes surrounding death and dying in 18th-century France. Focusing on the tension between the faithful and the growing ranks of unbelievers bred on Enlightenment philosophy, McManners charts the course of pestilence and plague, and examines the terrible fears connected with childbirth, disease, disfigurement, mortality, and the hereafter. He also examines suicide, public execution, and the rites surrounding the deathbed, and demonstrates how the period's ever-present concern with death and dying was transformed into the Romantic cult of melancholy that occupied the creative imagination of generations to come.

HistoryWorld History · medium confidenceWorld History81 signalsLlm Classifier: World History -> World HistoryGoogle Books: Family & Relationships -> Society & CultureKeyword Classifier: Medicine & Public Health -> Medicine & Public HealthDisease, Epidemics & DrugsMental Health & PsychologyDeath, Memory & CommemorationMedicine, Health & the Body

Award History

1 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Wolfson History PrizeMajor1982WinnerOfficial source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Eighteenth-century France72%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    In eighteenth-century France, death and dying practices shifted as Enlightenment philosophy increased unbelief, transforming faithful and unbeliever attitudes into the later Romantic cult of melancholy.

    Model confidence 42%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    65 / 100 academic

    Academic

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 58%.