Comparative Demonologies: Dostoevsky and Ferrante on the Boundaries of the Self
This article stages a conversation between Fyodor Dostoevsky and Elena Ferrante on the nature of the demonic. Dostoevsky and Ferrante, the essay argues, offer practical, expansive, and mutually illuminating literary frameworks that reconceive the notion of demonic possession in ways that traverse th...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Dep.
2017
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| In: |
Religion & literature
Year: 2017, Volume: 49, Issue: 2, Pages: 23-45 |
| RelBib Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history NBH Angelology; demonology |
| Further subjects: | B
Demonology
B Demoniac possession B FERRANTE, Elena, 1943- B Magnetism B Religious Aspects B Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article stages a conversation between Fyodor Dostoevsky and Elena Ferrante on the nature of the demonic. Dostoevsky and Ferrante, the essay argues, offer practical, expansive, and mutually illuminating literary frameworks that reconceive the notion of demonic possession in ways that traverse the secular and the religious. Both writers imagine the space of individual subjectivity as poised between opposing forms of possession: on the one hand, by the wills and instructions of other people that enter into the self from without, and on the other, by a pervasive, non-human agency (described variously as the ancient Greek nous, the Roman virtus, or the Christian Holy Spirit) that enters the self from within. In depicting her characters' resistance to these invasive forces, Ferrante presents a challenge to the theodicy at the heart of Dostoevsky's writing, a theodicy grounded in the primacy of human agency and its voluntary reception of a divine universal will. |
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| ISSN: | 2328-6911 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion & literature
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