This volume joins new editions of both texts of John Lydgate's The Dance
of Death, related Middle English verse, and a new translation of
Lydgate's French source, the Danse macabre. Together these poems
showcase the power of the danse macabre motif, offering a window into
life and death in late medieval Europe. In vivid, often grotesque, and
darkly humorous terms, these poems ponder life's fundamental paradox:
while we know that we all must die, we cannot imagine our own death.