A History of the Devil From the Middle Ages to the Present

by Muchembled, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780745628158
• ISBN10: 074562815X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-01-16
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

This highly original and engaging book by French historian Robert Muchembled, is a journey through time and space in search of the changing perception and significance of the devil in Western culture. The author takes the story back to the 13th century, when visual images of Satan first started to appear, and forward to the 20th Century, dealing with, among others, the place of the diabolical in the films of Stanley Kubrick, including Eyes Wide Shut. The changing figures of Evil over time are shown to correlate with the way in which men conceive of their destinies and the future of their civilisation. Fascination with the diabolical having reached its height in the witch-hunts of the 15th and 16th centuries, by the enlightenment, begins to show signs of decline, a process which has continued up to today. The result of this process, for modern western society, is a subtle metamorphosis of the notion of the devil from fear of Satan, into an internal demon, "the demon within" characterised by a distrust of oneself and ones desires. It is this conception of the diabolical that is visible today in our interest in the supernatural, exorcism, and for example, in the role of the "devlish good" in advertising. A rich, vivid history of a topic that never ceases to intrigue.

Author Biography

Robert Muchembled is a professor of history at the University of Paris XIII.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction: A Thousand Years of the Devil	1	(8)
Satan Makes his Entry: Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries	9	(26)
Satan and the myth of primordial combat	10	(2)
Good and bad devils	12	(9)
Instilling fear: the diabolic obsession at the end of the Middle Ages	21	(6)
The Evil One and the Beast	27	(8)
The Night of the Sabbath	35	(34)
Heresy	36	(2)
From Waldensians to witches	38	(6)
A hammer to crush the witches	44	(2)
Satanic nudity	46	(6)
The triumph of demon-mania	52	(8)
The mark of the devil	60	(9)
The Devil and the Body	69	(39)
The magical body	70	(4)
The female body	74	(6)
Monsters and marvels	80	(6)
The hell of sex	86	(10)
Towards a history of the senses: the promotion of sight	96	(3)
Towards a history of the senses: the demonizing of smell	99	(9)
Satanic Literature and Tragic Culture: 1550--1650	108	(40)
The fear of oneself	109	(2)
Devil books in Protestant Germany	111	(5)
The tragic culture in France	116	(8)
Rosset, the devil and the rotting corpse	124	(5)
Jean-Pierre Camus, or 'the spectacle of horror'	129	(9)
Bloodcurdling tales: the devil in the fait divers	138	(1)
The baroque and transgression	139	(9)
The Twilight of the Devil: From Classicism to Romanticism	148	(39)
Satan's final apotheosis	149	(4)
The fragmented images of evil	153	(8)
A disenchanted devil	161	(6)
The symbolic transition: from Satan to Mephistopheles	167	(7)
The role of fiction	174	(7)
Beelzebub in love	181	(6)
The Demon Within: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries	187	(40)
Doctrinal permanencies	188	(2)
Having fun with the devil: the Gothic novel and the frenetiques	190	(7)
The rebel angel of the Satanists	197	(7)
The children of the devil	204	(4)
The diabolic unconscious	208	(4)
'Taming the shadows'	212	(5)
A paper devil?	217	(10)
Pleasure or Terror: The Devil at the End of the Second Millennium	227	(44)
The devil, probably . . . prudent exorcism	230	(6)
'Devilish good': advertising, beer and the strip cartoon	236	(9)
The expressionist devil: from The Golem to Dies Irae	245	(5)
The film noir: horror, suspense and perversion	250	(12)
America's demons	262	(9)
Conclusion: Dancing with the Devil	271	(8)
Notes	279	(25)
Select Bibliography	304	(18)
Select Filmography	322	(10)
Index	332