Devotion and Decay: Death in the Late Medieval Imagination

Abstract

Medieval representations of death can illuminate how individuals conceptualised the experience. The poem "A Disputacione Betwyx The Body and Wormes" is a productive lens through which to consider contemporary notions of death and wider theological ideas such as the body-soul complex, as well as aiding our understanding of the reasons for the prevalence of the macabre in the late Middle Ages.