Speaking with the Dead provides a detailed historical record of how early Euro-Americans thought about and engaged with the dead and afterlife. It is, in essence, “a history of Protestant communication with the dead before the advent of Spiritualism” (5), covering the years roughly between the late sixteenth to the late nineteenth centuries. Erik Seeman goes to great lengths to utilize materials previously overlooked by historians to create a complex and nuanced view of the living-dead relationship, while giving voice to both people of color and women. The “with” in the title is apt, for the book examines communication in various forms “with” the dead—in imagined dialogue, on behalf of, and simply to.
The first three chapters of the book discuss the cultural-religious context of colonial America, the use of elegies in New England, and talking gravestones. Seeman argues that after the Reformation, Protestant practices concerning the dead and afterlife...
University of California Press