Ghosts and Revenants in the Middle Ages: An Interview with Alex Zawacki

As we approach Halloween, it's only appropriate that in this episode we discuss ghosts and revenants in the Middle Ages. Today's episode will be an interview with Alexander Zawacki. Dr. Zawacki is a lecturer in Digital Humanities at the University of Göttingen. He also publishes a Substack called It's Only Dark, a discussion of all things spooky. Link: It's Only Dark

Further Reading

Primary Sources

Joynes, Andrew, ed. Medieval Ghost Stories: An Anthology of Miracles, Marvels and Prodigies. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001.

This is your one-stop shop for medieval ghost stories. Joynes has gathered together a collection of ghost stories from a wide variety of medieval sources and translated them into modern English for the reader.

Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne. Edited by Robert J. Gates. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968.

This Middle English text is an Arthurian romance that also opens with a rather horrific ghost story. Requires reading in Middle English, but well worth it.

Secondary Sources

Caciola, Nancy Mandeville. Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2016.

This book has everything that you would want to know about the walking dead in the Middle Ages. Who reported on them, what medievals believed about them, and how belief in the undead varied across Europe.

Schmitt, Jean-Claude. Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society. Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

This book is a history of ghosts in the Middle Ages by Jean-Claude Schmitt, a scholar of religious history and the overlap and conflict of folk beliefs with the teachings of the Church as an institution. Many of Schmitt's sources are religious texts, wherein we encounter ghosts who usually have some unfinished business.

Want to talk about this episode? Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ujcEcCtxE9

Subscribe to my Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.