| Title | : | Afterlives of the Saints |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1609530721 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781609530723 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 |
| Publication | : | First published May 21, 2012 |
Afterlives of the Saints Reviews
-
Engaging and thought provoking. Dickey here doesn't dwell in detail on the gruesome aspects of the lives of the saints he chronicles. He uses their lives of passionate extremism as an entry point to examine what their dedication, pursued in various ways, reveals about their humanity, and about ours. He draws together poetry, literature, history, art, myth, psychology to offer a generous, wide-ranging consideration of what the lives of the saints – individuals, as he says, “at the edge of humanity” – can tell us about human strengths, fears, desires, and needs.
Divided into five sections, this collection of essays, each of which features a particular saint but which range into a startlingly varied range of human experience, delves captivatingly into both the peculiar and the profound. Dickey is launched into subjects as diverse as the ambiguities of textless images, brutality in war, prostitution, pornography, anatomical illustration, castrati, and more, inspired by the stories of the saints he has collected over the years. From Saint Anthony's multitudes of demons Dickey winds up with Gustave Flaubert and masturbation, both directly (Flaubert wrote a biography of Anthony, dedicating four years of his life to writing it and four days of the lives of his two closest friends to listening to him read aloud his “great work,” and when he finished the reading his dear friend could only say, “We think you should throw it into the fire and never speak of it again.” Flaubert believed that his epilepsy was a result of his method of relieving the stress that his “Anthony” project brought on.) and indirectly (of Emma Bovary he notes, “Emma's crime is only secondarily adultery; her real transgression is her surrender to the madness of novels, to the endless production of virtual images that have no correlation with the reality around her.”) Somehow, by the end of the chapter he's drawn links between between fantasy, capitalism, and madness with at least a fair degree of coherence.
On a lighter note, the legend of Saint Barbara segues into the story of Charles Dickens's conflict with his critics over the plausibility of spontaneous human combustion, which concludes the life of a minor character in the novel
Bleak House. As I said, Dickey covers quite a range of material!
I found this wonderfully entertaining, though sometimes his connections are pretty tenuous and speculative, and his perspective appears to be that of a charitable skeptic (this second point is not a criticism, just an observation). Also, the book's editing was carelessly done. Still, minor complaints aside,
Afterlives of the Saints is stimulating fun. -
What a satisfying book about the secular meaning of the extreme Catholic saints! I learned something entirely new in each chapter: Flaubert’s obsession with St. Anthony, the poetry of Radegund (“a lament so pure that is has a physical presence, a body and a smell of its own”), Teresa of Avila’s proximity to Quixote (“the ecstasy of writing, the relationship of reader and writer”), the pseudo-porno depictions of Agatha’s torture, the relationship between St. George—an interfaith saint—and colonialism, and more. The pieces are well crafted, blending insights from literature, history, and scholarship. Each essay ends with a memorable rhetorical “dismount”—a lingering idea that bolds some idea or puzzle in the phenomenon of each saint. The (martyred) saints become “the walking dead, zombies in their faith.” The author, meditating on Jerome, wonders if “the very act of reading…was itself a kind of memento mori” explaining why scholars keep human skulls in their libraries; crazy interesting…
-
I enjoyed this collection of essays very much; through the lens of the saints and their lives, deaths, and impacts Dickey explores diverse socio-cultural concepts. From pornography to John Donne, from the taking of human trophies during the war in the Pacific to the social impact of books and writing, Dickey places the saints in a wider historical context and asks important questions about what we consider sacred and what we consider profane, what we accept as truth and what we require to be fiction. A quick, interesting read. Definitely recommend!
-
Have you heard of hagiography? It's a genre referring to the writing of the lives of the saints. Honestly, I didn't know about this genre until I read Afterlives of the Saints by Colin Dickey.
To Colin Dickey, "saints exist not as a medium for God but as a lens for humanity". Hence, the book Afterlives of the Saints looks at a few saints that have impacted Colin Dickey for a few reasons: through their writings (Part One), because of the art and literature they inspired (Parts Two and Three), or because of the wide range of beliefs they encompassed (Part Four) and those that are un-canonised for various reasons (Part Five).
Honestly, I'm very unfamiliar with the world of the saints. I wasn't even aware that there were saints of libraries, of laughter and even cheese. But reading this book introduced me to the background behind them, the stories that made them famous.
For some reason, this book reminded me of Malcom Gladwell's What The Dog Saw because each chapter is a separate story, able to stand on its own. In fact, the only common thread throughout the whole book is that each saint is a Catholic saint. Other than that, the topics explored are quite vast, from libraries to art to death. In fact, the book doesn't even focus on the saint. More often than not, the saint is used as a launching board to delve into the history and the different views of the topic.
To me, this book was very interesting. I felt that the subject was dealt with fairly respectfully and appropriately. The book treats the saints as humans and doesn't venerate them. Instead, it looks at their background, and why they behaved the way they did. He notes that "saints are defined almost exclusively by their bodies, by what they did with them and what was done to them." and it is the reasons behind and the consequences of the acts that they do that the book explores.
All in all, this is a very interesting book. I recommend it for those wishing to expand their general knowledge, especially knowledge of the times when the Catholic Church was a major influence (socially and culturally).
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my free and honest review.
(First published at
http://www.allsortsofbooks.blogspot.c...) -
Not for everyone
And I'm not certain it was for me. A series of essays about a few saints and how their reputations have changed through time. Obviously, these are Dickey's opinions and I don't agree with most of his conclusions. Still, I give credit for the idea of the book. I have long been fascinated by the stories of the saints.
I don't think St. Agatha has anything to do with pornography merely by having her breasts removed during torture. Likewise St. Sebastian's metamorphosis into a gay icon is based merely on one painting. I have seen many more depictions of him than that one picture. The author seems to be reaching for his conclusions. I don't think he backed them up well enough to withstand scrutiny.
That is a shame because I liked the premise. Maybe Fr. James Martin can be persuaded to give the topic some thought. -
I was originally introduced to this book at a rep picks lunch at Winter Institute. The rep made it sound really interesting, so I picked up an ARC, but upon returning home, moved it to the end of my TBR shelf. It was every bit as fascinating as the rep made it out to be. You do not have to be Catholic, or even religious, to enjoy this book. It is not meant to convert you or appeal to your already vast religious knowledge. It's a series of stories about various saints (and some almost saints) from a layman's perspective. They paint a picture of how we are changed by these people we've probably never heard of who did something extraordinary for their time. I was fascinated from beginning to end.
-
This is so awesome and weird. It's about the strange and violent and sad lives of some of the saints, but also about Flaubert masturbating, and ecorches, and memento mori, and the meaning of texts in general. Really, really liked.
-
3.5 🌟
surprised that this wasn't an automatic 5-star considering ghostland is one of my favourite books in the world, and considering that when i was forced to go to mass as a kid i would obsessively read my illustrated book of saints instead of paying attention.
the prologue and first chapter were the strongest, imo. dickey's writing is at its most focused, his connections the strongest. he writes of the saints trying to get around of and out of their bodies, because one becomes a saint only in death, only in heaven. as the book progresses, the topics covered become more outlandish--the chapter on st. anthony spends an awful lot of time discussing the historical dangers of masturbation, for example--and they only land half the time. some work, like the obvious but perhaps overlooked connection between st. george and english colonialism + the conquest of wales, others, like st. anthony, and the chapter exploring spontaneous human combustion through st. barbara left me with a resounding feeling of "hm....okay, so what?"
most of my frustrations lie with the depictions of the figures i was most familiar with--st teresa of ávila, st. sebastian, st. lucy, and margery of kempe--their chapters were underwhelming because of my previous knowledge. for example, the chapter on teresa makes no mention of her torture by spanish inquisition, and of how dangerous it was to be a female mystic in the 16th century, and how teresa survived by removing herself from her own femininity. instead, the chapter talks about how much she read and wrote. additionally, it would have been interesting if dickey had explored some more modern saints from the 19th and 20th centuries to examine where notions of sainthood fit into a rapidly industrializing world.
"But that is what it means to love a divinity: to crave death, to want to die daily, to reject this world in favour of the promise of another." -
Fascinating look at saints. As a Pagan person who only has an anecdotal knowledge of Catholicism, it was very interesting to read about people who died for their faith and had such passion for their beliefs. This book has also sparked an interest in learning more about the mystics of Christian history.
-
An absolute gem
-
http://theprettygoodgatsby.wordpress....Hagiography - the writing of the lives of the saints - is a curious genre, now mostly forgotten.
Prior to reading this book, I had no idea hagiography was its own genre. I've always been fascinated with the saints and the stories behind their sainthood. The second I saw this book I knew I needed to read it.
Afterlives of the Saints turned out to be much different than I had expected! Over the course of my reading I bounced back and forced before ultimately deciding that this is just an okay book. It has its moments - and Mr. Dickey can be extremely sarcastic and witty, something I definitely appreciate - but I can't imagine this being a book I'd pick up again. It was enjoyable while it lasted, but now that I'm finished we'll be parting ways.You can't treat a saint as you would an ordinary human. When I think of the saints, what comes to mind are the "replicants" in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction classic Blade Runner, androids of advanced strength and intelligence whom their creator describes as "more human than human."
Mr. Dickey breaks up the novel into four parts: part one discusses saints and their writings, part two and three focuses on the world of art and literature, and part four sheds light on the beliefs saints held. There's also a fifth part - perhaps my favorite - reserved for the almost-saints.
The major flaw with this novel was that, oddly enough, not nearly enough attention was given to each saint Dickey selected. Imagine! Each chapter (if you will) can easily be read alone. Unfortunately, while each starts out with a particular saint, Dickey quickly proceeds to deviate and instead ends up discussing how society/film/war/nations/etc have changed or were influenced by that saint. There were times when I felt what Dickey was discussing had absolutely nothing to do with that chapter's saint.Conques, meanwhile, was still without its saint. Unable to get Vincent of Saragossa, they decided next to try to acquire Saint Vincent of Pompejac - one Vincent being apparently as good as the next.
Although I didn't necessarily dislike the book, I definitely feel as though I was a bit mislead. Afterlives of the Saints reads more like a series of essays that sort of kind of deal with a saint, rather than being the book I originally had imagined. Because of the stand-alone nature of the chapters, this is definitely a book where you could pick and choose which chapters you'd like to read. Want to read about Saint George and the dragon? Go for it! Feel like finding out more about Saint Simeon and how he perched atop a pole for three decades ("There are records of at least ten other saints who were revered for standing on poles.")? Feel free! Certain chapters, or rather certain saints, interested me more than others and those chapters were the ones I got through quickest.
In the end, I'm glad I read Afterlives of the Saints. The book as a whole was very fascinating and I learned an awful lot about these saints.
Favorite QuotesBut even as more and more hermits climbed atop pillars to escape the world, Simeon, the first of them, remained the most well known, the originator of a strange craze that swept the desert in the fifth and sixth centuries.
Let your first image of Gregory be this: singing hymns one morning in 580 to a passed-out Christ.
Agatha's torture included having her breasts cut off, and she is commonly depicted as holding those breasts on a tray before her. But the laity didn't always recognize these tan lumps as breats. They were misread often enough both as bells and as loaves of bread that she has become the patron saint of bell-forgers and bakers. And then there's Bartholomew, flayed alive, who holds, in addition to his own skin, the tool used to cut that skin off, a tool that looks sort of like a cheese cutter, so Florentine cheese merchants took Bartholomew as their patron.
She is not the only military saint, but she is the saint of the cannon, of the powder, of the sudden and convulsive explosion. Saint Barbara, who blows things up for justice.
According to the Palimpsest, George was forced to wear iron boots into which nails had been hammered, his head was beaten with a hammer, a ret-hot helmet was placed on his head, more nails were pounded into his head, his skin was pierced with iron hooks, he had molten lead poured into his mouth, he was placed inside a bronze bull lined with nails and spun around, and then he was set on fire.
-
After flying through Beekeeping for Beginners I needed another book for the rest of my trip. Good ol' Kindle had this little gem on it from - oh - 5 years ago. I guess my reading tastes are different when far afield because I've managed to not even glance at this title for 5 years but on the road it seemed like just the thing. I started it on an overnight bus ride and plowed through quite a bit before returning home. And when I did my reading pace slowed to a crawl. But I have to give this book credit; even though I wasn't in the mood for something like this when I got back to my "real life" I kept coming back to it essay by essay. Because here's the thing about this collection - it's fascinating!
Dickey sets out to tell us a little bit about the lives of some really extraordinary saints and then draw some conclusions about what it means about us as a people that we hold these people up as exemplars. In spite of my Catholic tradition and my BA in religious studies, hagiography has never really been my thing. I guess I've never been particularly interested in the lives of individual saints so much. But this twist where we examine the lives of the saints not through the lens of what they as individuals have to teach us so much as what we can learn by figuring out why they have become enduring symbols for us had me hooked. It helps that this book is both shocking and darkly funny. And Dickey has chosen some really amazing stories. St. Foy, St. Agatha, St. Lawrence of the Gridirons - these are not people we want to become and no pastor I have ever encountered would encourage the attempt. But the messages of their humanity through their faithfulness and the enduring devotion they have earned (whether twisted up through history or not) are certainly elucidating. -
This book is fun. The author organizes a series of essays about how saints have figured into the culture and transformed it, regardless of whether or not the saints' reputed miracles occurred. It is the stories of the saints that matter here, putting a spotlight on human nature and its attraction to violence and dreams of redemption. I knew nothing much about saint culture; I only vaguely recognize the impact of saints on art, language, and pulling older myths into religious frameworks. It's short and funny, worth a read. And I thought about Walter Ong the whole time I was reading.
-
A very thoughtful miscellany of saints. The author does not exactly mock them, nor is he overly pious; he just wants to talk about some of the more interesting saints and their legends, and how their stories express -- and amplify, exaggerate, even distort -- different aspects of the human experience, including some rather dark aspects of the cult of saints.
He clearly has done a lot of research for this, but does sound pedantic or pompous about it. Well worth reading, whether or not you have any particular interest in saints. -
It was interesting to look at these saints from a different perspective than I'm used to. I've heard the stories of many of these saints throughout my life as a Catholic, but I never realized how truly bonkers they sounds. It's like Grimm's tales for absolutely religious (that's the best way I could say fanatic without the negative connotation).
Reading this I felt strong connections with much if Flannery O'Connor's work, particularly "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" and "Wise Blood." Both allude to modern-day people trying find a path to God much as the saints in these stories did. -
Very intellectual, gives you information of past events making them part of today. A quote related to the British flag. "When the fiercely anti-Catholic Edmund Spenser wrote his epic in honor of Queen Elizabeth, The Faerie Queene, he began with George - though he could not, of course, call him that. Instead, George is stripped of his Catholicism and rechristened, "the Redcrosse Knight" (after George's famous red cross on a white background, which became England's flag)
-
Some of these essays are brilliant and if taken separately, the book would deserve a 5-star rating. Other essays wander far afield and show the author's obvious political bias which is kind of sad. Other essays, particularly the one on Magdalen, a subject truly deserving of copious thought and shrewd insight from an essayists as good as Dickey, are so off the mark that it is hard to believe an editor was involved in the book's production.
-
Really enjoyed this book and learned a lot. It is not merely about Saints, it takes particular Saints and draws some incredible connections to life/events after their deaths, hence the title. Topics such as spontaneous human combustion, pornography, castration, reading, madness, among many others are included. Recommended!
-
Honestly,
This wasn't what I was expecting. I really enjoyed when the author actually spent time on the lives of the saints, but I didn't like how there was so much extra meta-physical jargon.
Couldn't even finish it. -
Saints are a prominent feature in my daily life, living as I do in a Catholic country and educated as I was in Catholic schools. They were always fascinating to me, not necessarily because they were examples to be emulated or as a focus for religious devotion, but because of their stories, and their associations to various aspects of life. How does a saint become a patron of anything, anyway, and often of so many disparate things, too? Is a gruesome death a prerequisite to becoming a martyr? Is that why so many other saints attempted to do equally gruesome things to themselves in order to achieve sainthood, once the Roman Empire had collapsed and torturing Christians was no longer a thing (it was never a thing, by the way - at least not to the extent that Catholic catechism makes it out to be)? Dickey's book attempts to answer those questions, and a few others besides, by looking at the stories of a handful of saints, ranging in fame from Teresa of Avila to the more obscure Saint Foy (who I am thoroughly convinced must be the patron saint of trolls - not the mythical variety, but the Internet kind). Definitely a must-read for curious, open-minded Catholics and Christians, as well as history buffs looking for a better understanding of what goes into making a saint.
