The demonic : literature and experience

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Are we either good or bad, and do we really know the difference? Why do we want what we cannot have, and even to be what we're not? Can we desire others without wanting to possess them? Can we open to others and not risk possession ourselves? And where, in these cases, do we draw the line?

Ewan Fernie argues that the demonic tradition in literature offers a key to our most agonised and intimate experiences. The Demonic ranges across the breadth of Western culture, engaging with writers as central and various as Luther, Shakespeare, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Melville and Mann.

A powerful foreword by Jonathan Dollimore brings out its implications as an intellectual and stylistic breakthrough into new ways of writing criticism. Fernie unfolds an intense and personal vision, not just of Western modernity, but of identity, morality and sex. As much as it's concerned with the great works, this is a book about life.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of illustrations (p. vii)
• Acknowledgements (p. ix)
• Note on references (p. xi)
• Foreword (p. xiii)
• Part 1 Demonic negativity (p. 1)
• 1 Dark night of the soul (p. 3)
• 2 Luther: man between God and the Devil (p. 34)
• 3 Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (p. 45)
• 4 Demonic Macbeth (p. 50)
• 5 Satan (and demonic sex) (p. 69)
• 6 A justified sinner (p. 81)
• 7 Dostoevsky's demons (p. 87)
• 8 Thomas Mann as Dr Faustus (via Love's Labour's Lost) (p. 115)
• 9 She Devil (p. 142)
• 10 Loving the alien (p. 148)
• Part 2 Turnabout and dialectic (p. 151)
• 11 Kierkegaard trembling (p. 153)
• 12 Nietzsche: a demon that laughs (p. 160)
• 13 The marriage of heaven and hell (p. 165)
• 14 Demonic dialectic: Boehme, Schelling, Hegel (p. 169)
• Part 3 Possession (p. 181)
• 15 Introduction (p. 183)
• A The agony in possessing (p. 189)
• 16 Angelo (p. 191)
• 17 Claggart (p. 201)
• 18 Possessing a child (p. 208)
• 19 Possessing god (p. 209)
• 20 Christ the possessor (p. 213)
• B The possessed (p. 217)
• 21 Introduction (p. 219)
• 22 Donne (p. 220)
• 23 Poor Tom (p. 223)
• 24 A Freudian interruption (p. 237)
• 25 The devils of Loudon (p. 240)
• 26 Jane Lead (p. 245)
• 27 The Master of Petersburg (p. 253)
• 28 Schreber (p. 264)
• Notes (p. 285)
• Index (p. 304)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Fernie (Univ. of Birmingham, UK) offers an uncommonly inviting study that readers can sink their discriminating teeth into with gusto. He presents an irresistible, meticulously prepared, expertly executed, and aesthetic smorgasbord in the form of one savory reading after another of assorted literary texts. In 28 chapters, the author analyzes masterpieces and some less familiar works dealing with the subject of the demonic. He concludes that the demonic and the angelic reside in close proximity, the one verging on the other through a dialectic of ecstasy that links possessor and possessed under the phenomenological rubric of possession. In subjugating the self to the ravishment of a foreign, invasive force, possession seasons the blandness of living with a full measure of transcendence, akin to the rapturous intensity of sexual union. However, the question remains: Will the subjugated soul, perhaps under the thrall of the diabolic, bend toward evil as a way of being in the world, or will it, perhaps under the aegis of the divine, incline toward the good? No one can say assuredly, Fernie tells readers, for in the throes of delirious bliss it is difficult to distinguish one's better angels from their malevolent counterparts. Summing Up: Highly recommended. For upper-division undergraduates and above. H. I. Einsohn Middlesex Community College