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Chapter 2: Medieval and Early Modern Devils: Names and Images

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Histories of the Devil

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Abstract

A history of the devil read through Chaucer, Dante, and medieval drama, especially through plays dealing with the Harrowing of Hell; a study of Mankind and The Castle of Perseverance, an analysis of the Vice, and a concluding section on the Porter of Hell Gate in Macbeth, together with discussion of the scholarly debates on how long the angels who sinned took to do so after their creation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See ‘The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’ lines 886, in the reference to the goat; and 984, 1159, 1172–1174, 1238, 1273, 1301–1303.

  2. 2.

    The so-called Towneley Master is credited with parts of plays II (Cain), III (Noah), XII, XIII, (the two Shepherds’ Plays), XVI (Herod), XXI (the Buffeting), XXII (the Scourging), XXIV (a Pilate play).

  3. 3.

    In Middleton’s satirical pamphlet, The Black Book (1604), the devil makes his will as ‘Lawrence Lucifer,…alias Dick Devil-barn, the griping farmer of Kent’ (Middleton 2007: 2.215). The farmer is already diabolical. The name Lawrence is presumably on account of his griddling: saint and devil experience the same burning.

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    Jeremy Tambling

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Tambling, J. (2016). Chapter 2: Medieval and Early Modern Devils: Names and Images. In: Histories of the Devil. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51832-3_3

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