Three 1930s Novels about Satan
This essay surveys the treatment of Satan in three significant though largely neglected novels of the 1930s, Klaus Mann’s Mephisto (1936), Howell Davies’ Congratulate the Devil (1939), and Anton Tamsaare’s The Misadventures of the New Satan (1939). Despite the marginalization of discourse about Sata...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
Published: |
2014
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In: |
Journal of the bible and its reception
Year: 2014, Volume: 1, Issue: 2, Pages: 237-251 |
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Devil
/ Bible
/ Literature
/ History 1930-1940
|
IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture HA Bible NBH Angelology; demonology |
Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Summary: | This essay surveys the treatment of Satan in three significant though largely neglected novels of the 1930s, Klaus Mann’s Mephisto (1936), Howell Davies’ Congratulate the Devil (1939), and Anton Tamsaare’s The Misadventures of the New Satan (1939). Despite the marginalization of discourse about Satan in European Christianity of the period, each of these novels adopts its own idiosyncratic stance towards the realistic representation of a diabolical entity, drawing on a combination of biblical and folkloric models. Whilst Mann’s novel reiterates and extends the Faustian tradition of the individual succumbing to damnation, the other two novels inventively uphold the folkloric reception of the biblical Satan as a social force. |
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ISSN: | 2329-4434 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of the bible and its reception
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1515/jbr-2014-0016 |