Mixed metaphors: the Danse Macabre in medieval and early modern Europe

摘要

The Danse Macabre or Dance of Death was one of the great, iconographic subjects of popular culture across Christian Europe in the later Middle Ages, along with other essenti-alist visions of the human condition: the Wheel of Eortune and the Ages of Man. The Danse depicted Death as a malevolent, partially fleshed cadaver, seizing people from all walks of life and carrying them off to an end that was as unexpected as it was unwanted. The Danse was a memento mori show that taught the egalitarian lesson that all people - rich and poor alike - must die, and that death could happen anywhere and anytime.