Representations of the Dead: Cultures of Memorialisation in Early Modern England, 1660-1770

This thesis explores the relationship between the voices and representations of the dead, urbanity and civility in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. It brings together two previously separated studies of death: church monuments and ghost stories. These materials used representations of the dead to communicate social values and ideals to the living. They were presented as policing morals and promoting concepts of civility, community and sociability as virtuous characteristics and beliefs. This study combines quantitative and qualitative research to assess a ‘chronology of commemoration’. The evidence collected in this study challenges previous ideas about the dead retreating from early modern society. First, there was an increased proliferation of both monuments and ghost stories from 1660 to 1770. Second, this thesis traces the changes made to the language of memorialisation and the language of ghost stories to reveal how the living reshaped the dead to mirror changing cultural opinions on virtue and vice. These changes reflected shifts to the cultural ideals connected with civility and the rise of polite society in early modern England. Far from being removed from society, the dead were ever present. They continued to do cultural work as tools for the living to negotiate and establish their identities, beliefs and overall sense of belonging.