"A History of Hell"

The History Of Hell by Alice K. Turner is not aiming to be a scholarly work on the subject, indeed the writer's normal job is fiction editor for Playboy, but despite or perhaps because of that, it makes for a fairly interesting read. She traces the origins of hell from the roots of Western and Christian traditions down to the present day. The book gives a good, though often quite brief, overview of different beliefs, how they grew changed and influenced each other over time. She draws on religious sources as well as literature, philosophy and art for her interpretations of how things have changed. I felt that the parts I already knew about were too brief, but the parts where I knew the least I was given enough information to start to understand the changes that were taking place and why. I particularly enjoyed the early Christian, medieval and early modern periods. I felt that when she got up to the 18th century the book became a bit weaker as there seemed to be so much more being written that she wanted to included, literature and art philosophy, science, and to a much smaller extent, religious teachings, that each area got only the smallest of mentions. I would also criticise the fact that while she said writing about the devil was not the aim of her book, she couldn't help but include him and works about him even when they didn't really relate to any ideas about hell. She also mentioned how Satan became distanced from any conception of hell after Milton but gave no evidence as to why she had come to this conclusion in anyway.

But the book contained many gorgeous illustrations, and was surprisingly readable. I think there would be some new ideas to most people found in it. As well as being a good reference point for looking at different sources from different times. Reading it made me realise I really need to read Marlowe's Faust, fortunately Bill was able to produce a copy from the shelf and I shall have to try and find the time to read that very soon. The book was hardly groundbreaking but a nice general introduction to the subject. Though I think the book would be more accurately re-titled as "A history of Western thought on the idea of Christian Hell". And I've already convinced my dad that he should read it.

(no subject)

The first draft of my 4000 word essay for my Historical Reasearch Methods class is 6493 words long! I think I am too verbose! Alas you can't use Lj-cuts to get away with writting too much in an essay. Fortunatly I still have almost a week for editing!