Description

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This volume presents a chronological series of essays on various demonic traits and traditions handed down from classical antiquity, reinterpreted and systematized in the Middle Ages in Europe, and extending their influences to our present day and culture. The main focus lies on the adaptation and reformulation of specific demonological constellations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, combining ethnological approaches with concepts of cultural history and their reflection in the arts and in literature. These superhuman and supernatural entities present us with a multitude of forms, figures, and functions - from helpful messengers and mediators to frightful and devilish antagonists of the humans they encounter. As model explanations of that which may not be explained in any other way they offer answers and interpretations of the 'Other' outside humanity as well as inside the human being.

About the Author

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The Editors: Ruth Petzoldt studied Germanic Literature, Philosophy, and Art History at the Universities Innsbruck, Austria and Regensburg, Germany. She was enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of California, Los Angeles and is now completing her doctoral thesis at the University of Munich on the drama of German Romanticism. Paul Neubauer is currently Assistant Professor of American studies at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and has studied and taught at the University of Alberta at Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tenn., and Brown University at Providence, R.I., USA.