Imagining the Medieval Afterlife: Introduction

Summary

This short introduction first places the medieval tradition of thought about the afterlife in a larger and longer context, then lays out the historiographical background for the collection.It also briefly introduces each of the fifteen chapters, noting how together they tend to shift the focus away from the twelfth century (hitherto considered a key turning point in the history of the afterlife) to the early Middle Ages and the later.It closes by noting that the contributions also keep to a current trend of seriously considering the reception and influence of texts and ideas, here suggesting that afterlife visions (for example) became an integral part of the medieval imagination.