Urne-Burial
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.
Written after the discovery of over forty Bronze Age burial urns in seventeenth-century Norfolk, Sir Thomas Browne's profound consideration of the inevitability of death remains one of the most fascinating and poignant of all reflections upon the vanity of mankind's lust for immortality.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the mid 17th century, some 40 to 50 Roman burial urns were uncovered in the fields of Norfolk, the occasion of which moved Dr. Thomas Browne to reflect on the significance of their contents, as well as on the ultimate insignificance of their discovery. This gorgeous new edition reintroduces Browne's seminal meditation on impermanence. Browne explores the quirk of fate that these seemingly delicate urns of ash and bone remained unharmed, despite the work of the plow and the destruction of most everything above ground. He also considers the response to death of various faiths and traditions, those who do and do not cremate their dead. His quiet language is profound and humble, timeless as well as singularly poignant. Sebald's preface, excerpted from The Rings of Saturn, introduces Browne's life and work as a physician, along with Sebald's own account of his search for Browne's skull, rumored to have been kept in a museum hospital. Additionally, Sebald paints the landscape of Browne's Renaissance contemporaries as they too engaged with the remains of the dead, notably Rembrandt's painting of human dissection. The pairing of these two works accentuates the importance of both.
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