When the Dead Rise: Narratives of the Revenant, from the Middle Ages to the Present Day

A survey of the motif of the revenant, showing how medieval themes and motifs persist today.

The proliferation of books and films about the "undead", those literally returning from the grave, in modern popular culture has been commented on as a recent phenomenon, but it is in fact a storytelling tradition going back more than a millennium. It drew on and was influenced by Christian eschatology, gathered momentum in medieval ecclesiastical chronicles, such as those written by Caesarius of Hei...