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Introduction: Literature and Manicheism

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Histories of the Devil

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Abstract

The Introduction to Histories of the Devil: Marlowe to Mann and the Manichees surveys the territory to be explored in the book, and some of the presuppositions it makes. It looks at the Faust theme, and at what is meant by the Manichee heresy; it discusses how Manicheism, with its origins older than those of Christianity, constructs a dualistic moral universe, and it looks at a history of the devil from Augustine to Marlowe. It discusses the concept of the daimon and the genius, and finishes with comments on stage soliloquies, and how these may be addressed to the devil, and finally considers how the concept of the devil requires thinking through in terms of allegory.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For traditional studies of the devil, see, from a huge literature, for which they provide full bibliographies, the four volumes by Russell (1977, 1981, 1985, 1986), and by McGinn (2000) and Kelly (2006). These are thorough, and detailed, and outside what this book attempts to do, (a) because they systematically link the devil with evil, which is to concede the point to Christianity, whose story they are telling; for Kelly, ‘the only true devil is the Christian devil’ (2006: 4); (b) because they assume there is a history there of something discussable whereas this book has as subject the history of a non-concept; (c) because their agenda is so much pro-American in what it evaluates as evil and then passes off as a universal discourse: note the slippage in the title whereby McGinn’s book on the Antichrist becomes in its subtitle ‘the human fascination with evil’. Their nostalgia is that though talk of the devil has, largely, died down, there is still evil to be considered: ‘the enemy within’ (McGinn 2000: xvi). By far the best traditional study of the devil, putting him into narrative theory, is Forsyth (1987), while Fernie (2013) is engaging. Other overviews of the devil are noted as they appear and are discussed.

  2. 2.

    Marlowe’s play exists in two versions The Tragicall History of Dr Faustus (A version, 1604), or The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Dr Faustus (B version, 1616). ‘A’ shows Faust acting; ‘B’, which is longer, shows him acted upon, with evidence of censoring in religious passages (‘God’ becomes ‘heaven’). It is more moralising, Calvinist, gloating in details confirming Faustus’ damnation (Barber 1988: 87–130). Yet since Marlowe died in 1593, neither text possesses authority. Teasingly, Philip Henslowe commissioned revisions to the play in 1602, so perhaps both versions have suffered tampering. It seems unwise to commit to either A or B in isolation.

  3. 3.

    Quoted, Frieden (1985: 67, 68); he compares also the uses, and definitions, of ‘Genius’ in Addison’s Spectator nos. 159, and 160.

  4. 4.

    Dichtung und Wahrheit was completed as to its first three books by 1813; its fourth, from which this comes, was written 1831–1832, and published posthumously in 1833.

  5. 5.

    Eckermann (1792–1854) met Goethe in Weimar in 1823, and began recording conversations with him in 1824, continuing until Goethe’s death: they were published in 1836 and 1848.

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    Jeremy Tambling

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Tambling, J. (2016). Introduction: Literature and Manicheism. In: Histories of the Devil. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51832-3_1

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