Death War And Sacrifice

One of the world's leading specialists in Indo-European religion and society, Bruce Lincoln expresses in these essays his severe doubts about the existence of a much-hypothesized prototypical Indo-European religion. Written over fifteen years, the essays—six of them previously unpublished—fall into three parts. Part I deals with matters "Indo-European" in a relatively unproblematized way, exploring a set of haunting images that recur in descriptions of the Otherworld from many cultures. While Lincoln later rejects this methodology, these chapters remain the best available source of data for the topics they address. In Part II, Lincoln takes the data for each essay from a single culture area and shifts from the topic of dying to that of killing. Of particular interest are the chapters connecting sacrifice to physiology, a master discourse of antiquity that brought the cosmos, the human body, and human society into an ideologically charged correlation. Part III presents Lincoln's most controversial case against a hypothetical Indo-European protoculture. Reconsidering the work of the prominent Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumézil, Lincoln argues that Dumézil's writings were informed and inflected by covert political concerns characteristic of French fascism. This collection is an invaluable resource for students of myth, ritual, ancient societies, anthropology, and the history of religions. Bruce Lincoln is professor of humanities and religious studies at the University of Minnesota.

This book explores how writers from the early nineteenth century to the present have addressed the intimacy of sacrifice and war. Each chapter presents fresh insights into the literature of a particular conflict. The range of literature examined complements the rich array of topics related to wartime sacrifice that the contributors discuss.

In the popular imagination, World War I stands for the horror of all wars. The unprecedented scale of the war and the mechanized weaponry it introduced to battle brought an abrupt end to the romantic idea that soldiers were somehow knights in shining armor who always vanquished their foes and saved the day. Yet the concept of chivalry still played a crucial role in how soldiers saw themselves in the conflict. Here for the first time, Allen J. Frantzen traces these chivalric ideals from the Great War back to their origins in the Middle Ages and shows how they resulted in highly influential models of behavior for men in combat. Drawing on a wide selection of literature and images from the medieval period, along with photographs, memorials, postcards, war posters, and film from both sides of the front, Frantzen shows how such media shaped a chivalric ideal of male sacrifice based on the Passion of Jesus Christ. He demonstrates, for instance, how the wounded body of Christ became the inspiration for heroic male suffering in battle. For some men, the Crucifixion inspired a culture of revenge, one in which Christ's bleeding wounds were venerated as badges of valor and honor. For others, Christ's sacrifice inspired action more in line with his teachings—a daring stay of hands or reason not to visit death upon one's enemies. Lavishly illustrated and eloquently written, Bloody Good will be must reading for anyone interested in World War I and the influence of Christian ideas on modern life.

The military-industrial complex in the United States has grown exponentially in recent decades, yet the realities of war remain invisible to most Americans. The U.S has created a culture in which sacrificial rhetoric is the norm when dealing in war. This culture has been enabled because popular American Christian understandings of redemption rely so heavily on the sacrificial. 'U.S War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation' explores how the concept of Christian redemption has been manipulated to create a mentality of "necessary sacrifice". The study reveals the links between Christian notions of salvation and sacrifice and the aims of the military-industrial complex.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Every serviceman or woman from the British Empire who died as a result of World War One was entitled to a bronze memorial plaque to be awarded to their next of kin. This memorial plaque came to be known as a 'Death Penny'. A unique award in the history of warfare, it was specifically designed not to draw any distinction between rank, race, creed or class, as all whom it represented had ultimately made the same sacrifice of life itself. Once separated from the family and other documents that could identify an individual, their story could be easily forgotten. Gathered here are the stories of 35 individuals from all over the empire whose sacrifice for our freedom should never be forgotten. Lest we forget............

This book offers a feminist analysis of military sacrifice and reveals the importance of a gender perspective in understanding the idea of honourable death. In present-day security discourses, traditional masculinised obligations to die for the homeland and its women and children are challenged and renegotiated. Working from a critical feminist perspective, this book examines the political and societal justifications for sacrifice in wars motivated by human rights and an international responsibility to protect. With original empirical research from six European countries, the volume demonstrates how gendered and nationalistic representations saturate contemporary notions of sacrifice and legitimate military violence. A key argument is that a gender perspective is necessary in order to understand, and to oppose, the idea of the honourable military death. Bringing together a wide range of materials – including public debates, rituals, monuments and artwork – to analyse the justifications for soldiers’ deaths in the Afghanistan war (2002–14), the analysis challenges methodological nationalism. The authors develop a feminist comparative methodology and engage in cross-country and transdisciplinary analysis. This innovative approach generates new understandings of the ways in which both the idealisation and the political contestation of military violence depend on gendered national narratives. This book will be of much interest to students of gender studies, critical military studies, security studies and International Relations.

This “layered, nuanced, and focused study” of Civil War era writings reveals a popular sense of patriotism and hope in the midst of loss (Journal of American History). The American Civil War is often seen as the first modern war, not least because of the immense suffering it inflicted. Yet unlike later conflicts, it did not produce an outpouring of disillusionment or cynicism in public or private discourse. In fact, most people portrayed the war in highly sentimental and patriotic terms. While scholars typically dismiss this everyday writing as simplistic or naïve, Frances M. Clarke argues that we need to reconsider the letters, diaries, songs, and journalism penned by Union soldiers and their caregivers to fully understand the war’s impact and meaning. In War Stories, Clarke revisits the most common stories that average Northerners told in hopes of redeeming their suffering and hardship—stories that enabled people to express their beliefs about religion, community, and personal character. From tales of Union soldiers who died heroically to stories of tireless volunteers who exemplified the Republic’s virtues, War Stories sheds new light on this transitional moment in the history of war, emotional culture, and American civic life.