Proudly serving monsters since 1998.
This monstrous section is devoted to thanatology in its original sense. Death as a fundamental universal concern has been examined and re-examined in a wide variety of disciplines, dating back to prehistory.
Some of these fields of study are academic in nature; others have evolved throughout history as cultural traditions. Because death is such a broad and complex subject, Monstrous.com relies on a holistic approach.
In Italy besides the traditional dance of death we find spectacular representations of death as the all-conqueror in the so-called “Trionfo della Morte”. The earliest traces of this conception may be found in Dante and Petrarch. According to Ariès, Death as “the common tyrant,” and triumphing conqueror, was “a symbol of blind fate”, very different, … Read more
Aka: Danse macabre, Danza macabra, Todtentanz The French term Danse Macabre may derive from the Latin Chorea Machabæorum, literally “dance of the Maccabees.” A favorite medieval theme, connected with the view of the world as mere vanity, was the leveling of all social classes and ranks in death, with the latter aptly personified as the … Read more
Dialogue Between Fashion and Death (1824) by Giacomo Leopardi, and translated by Charles Edwardes in 1857 The piece presents ‘Fashion’ as a fictional character in conversation with ‘Death’, that is, like Death, actively responsible for human suffering. Conceived by the Italian poet, essayist, and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837), it has since been adopted into the … Read more
Another notable genre of art associated with memento mori is the Vanitas ou vanité (French) (Latin for ‘vanity’), which focuses on still-life works, containing various symbolic objects that are meant to remind the viewer of their mortality, and emphasize the worthlessness of worldly pleasures. Such works of art often contain traditional memento mori symbols, such … Read more
Death helps sell, the fascination for death added to the usual censure by media on the subject make it a fine advertising incentive. In 1992, nearly one million packs of the “Death” brand of cigarettes were sold in the United States. According to Greg Palmer (Death: The Trip of a Lifetime, 1993), cigarette sales actually … Read more
A major tradition in the study of death across cultures and time has been to demarcate distinctive death time periods in Western history. The most notable illustration is Philippe Ariès’s The Hour of Our Death, which propose an evolutionary model, in which death through several successive stages reverted from the tame to the savage state … Read more
A Joker To contrast with the normally dark and antagonistic classical depiction of Death, many comedies portray him as a somewhat sympathetic character, an average Joe who’s simply doing a necessary and unpleasant job. The weapons of death Considering that a human being was engaged in an agonistic struggle against death, military terminology prevailed in … Read more
Almost all cultures have beliefs in ghosts. Although there have been exceptions, the general rule has always been to keep spirits away from the living, and avoid them at all costs. Ghosts were thought to be stubborn and mean. To primitive societies, a ghost was like a “bomb” to the living. All of their rites … Read more