Reading Death as an Ideological Tool in John Lydgate’s Dance of Death

Authors : Pınar TAŞDELEN

Pages : 120-132

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Publication Date : 2023-05-31

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :The Danse Macabre tradition emerged in the medieval art and literature as a result of the Black Death in the fourteenth century Europe to remind people of the transience of the earthly pleasures and imminence of death. In the Danse Macabre poems, mostly the personification of death summons the individuals to a dance. Dance of Death is originally a French poem translated into English by the English monk and poet John Lydgate in the fifteenth century. As a work written in the Danse Macabre tradition, it is an example of medieval didactic poetry with its dialogues between the personified death and the individuals from different estates in the society. The Death invites various sinful or sinless individuals regardless of their sex, rank, and age to die. Attendance to this invitation reminding the medieval people of their own mortality and sinfulness is obligatory, and it is conducted under the governance and the authority of The Death. Accordingly, the aim of this article is to trace the Danse Macabre tradition in the poem, and discuss to what extent the poem’s thematic materials coincide with those of the Althusserian ideological state apparatuses, by asserting that, above its religious didacticism, the dance of the dead led by The Death in the poem alludes to the Althusserian religious and cultural ideological state apparatuses.
Keywords : John Lydgate, Ölüm Dansı, Ölüm Dansı Geleneği, Ölüm, Althusseryen İdeoloji