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Dance of Death
Dance of Death or danse macabre , originally a 14th-century morality poem. The poem was a dialogue between Death and representatives of all classes from the Pope down. By the 15th cent., pictorial representation with verses illustrating the pictures became common. The dance, in which Death as a skeleton or a corpse led his victims, was painted on walls of churchyards and cemeteries. The earliest known fully articulated example of the Dance of Death was a series of mural paintings (1424–25) in the cloisters of the Church of the Holy Innocents, Paris. The paintings were destroyed in 1669. In 1485, Guyot Marchand published a set of 17 woodcuts, with verses appended, based on the Paris murals; the set went through many editions and established its own genre. The best-known representations of the Dance of Death are the drawings of Holbein, the younger. Goethe wrote a ballad on the theme, Der Todtentanz, and in music Saint-Saëns used it in Danse macabre. |
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"Dance of Death." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "Dance of Death." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Death-Da.html "Dance of Death." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Death-Da.html |
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Dance of Death
Dance of Death, or danse macabre (or danse macabré), gave expression to the sense especially prominent in the 15th cent. (perhaps as a consequence of the plague and the preaching of the mendicant friars) of the ubiquity of Death the leveller. The Dance appears to have first taken shape in France, as a mimed sermon in which figures typical of various orders of society were seized and haled away each by its own corpse. The earliest known painting of the Dance, accompanied by versified dialogues between living and dead, was made in 1424 in the cemetery of the Innocents in Paris, and the German artists (including Holbein) who later depicted it appear to have drawn inspiration from French sources.
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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-DanceofDeath.html MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-DanceofDeath.html |
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Dance of Death
Dance of Death or Danse Macabre or Totentanz. A defiant reaction, principally in medieval Europe, to the unpredictable but inevitable occurrence of death. It was evoked especially by the spread of bubonic plague in the 14th cent., when sufferers danced in graveyards. Of many illustrations, Holbein's woodcuts, ‘Totentanz’, are particularly well-known. This deliberate confronting of death has a remote parallel in the Buddhist contemplation of death and of the frailties in the body which lead to it: see e.g. DEVA-DŪTA; DHĀTU-VAVATTHĀNA; FOUR LAST THINGS.
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JOHN BOWKER. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. 1997. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. JOHN BOWKER. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. 1997. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O101-DanceofDeath.html JOHN BOWKER. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. 1997. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O101-DanceofDeath.html |
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Dance of Death
Dance of Death. An allegorical subject in European art, in which the figure of Death, usually represented as a skeleton, is shown meeting various characters and leading them all in a dance to the grave.
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E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O95-DanceofDeath.html E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O95-DanceofDeath.html |
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Dance of Death
Dance of Death. See (1) Danse macabre; (2) Totentanz.
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MICHAEL KENNEDY and JOYCE BOURNE. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. MICHAEL KENNEDY and JOYCE BOURNE. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O76-DanceofDeath.html MICHAEL KENNEDY and JOYCE BOURNE. "Dance of Death." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. 1996. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O76-DanceofDeath.html |
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dance of death
dance of death see Death, Dance of . |
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Cite this article
"dance of death." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "dance of death." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-X-dancedea.html "dance of death." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-X-dancedea.html |
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