Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

Three 1930s Novels about Satan

  • Anthony Swindell EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 16. Oktober 2014

Abstract

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.


Corresponding author: Anthony Swindell, King’s College, University of London, UK, e-mail:

Works Cited

Primary Works.Suche in Google Scholar

Davies, Howell. 2008 [1939]. Congratulate the Devil. Cardigan: Parthian /Library of Wales.Suche in Google Scholar

Mann, Klaus. Mephisto. Translated by Robin Smyth. London: Penguin, 1995 [1936].Suche in Google Scholar

Tammsaare, Anton. 2008 [1939]. The Misadventures of the New Satan. Translated by Olge Shartze. London: Norvik Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Secondary Works.Suche in Google Scholar

Davies, Jonathan Ceredig. 1911. Folk-Lore of West and Mid Wales. Aberystwyth: Llanerch Publishing.Suche in Google Scholar

Galbreath, Robert. 1981. “Problematic Gnosis: Hesse, Singer, Lessing, and the Limitations of Modern Gnosticism.” The Journal of Religion 61 (1): 20–36.10.1086/486823Suche in Google Scholar

Genette, Gérard. 1997. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Translated by C. Newman and C. Doubinsky. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Hill, Alan G. 1990. “Three Visions of Judgement: Southey, Byron and Newman.” The Review of English Studies, New Series, 41 (163): 334–350.10.1093/res/XLI.163.334Suche in Google Scholar

Laar, Mart. 2004. “The Restoration of Independence in Estonia.” In Estonia: Identity and Independence, edited by David Cousins, 225–238. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Suche in Google Scholar

Mills, Moylan C. 1990. “The Three Faces of Mephisto: Film, Novel and Reality.” Literature/Film Quarterly 18 (4): 255–259.Suche in Google Scholar

Nuttall, Anthony David. 1998. The Alternative Trinity: Gnostic Heresy in Marlowe, Milton and Blake. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184621.003.0004Suche in Google Scholar

Parker, Fred. 2011. The Devil as Muse. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Piette, Alaine. 1988. “The Face in the Mirror – Faust as Self-Deceived Actor,” Literature/Film Quarterly 26 (2): 136–140.Suche in Google Scholar

Ricoeur, Paul. 1995. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative and the Imagination. Translated by David Pellauer. Minneapolis, MN: Fortess Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Russell, Jeffrey Burton. 1988. The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Swindell, Anthony C. 2009. How Contemporary Novelists Rewrite Stories from the Bible. Lampeter and New York: Edwin Mellen.Suche in Google Scholar

Swindell, Anthony C. 2013. “Devil, The (Literature).” In The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception vol. 6. edited by Dale C. Alison, Jr., Hans-Josef Klauck, et al. Berlin: De Gruyter.Suche in Google Scholar

Thompson, Stith. 1977. The Folktale. Berkeley: University of California Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Valk, Ülo. 2001. The Black Gentleman: Manifestations of the Devil in Estonian Folk Religion. Helsinki: FF Communications.Suche in Google Scholar

Valk, Ülo. 2008. “Folk and the Others: Constructing Social Reality in Estonian Legends.” In Legends and Landscape, edited by T. Gunnell, 153–170. Reykjavik: University of Iceland Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Villon, François. 2001. Poems. Translated by Peter Dale. London: Anvil.Suche in Google Scholar

Watt, Ian. 1997. Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511549236Suche in Google Scholar

Wentersdorf, Karl P. 1978. “Some Observations on the Historical Faust.” Folklore 89 (2): 201–223.10.1080/0015587X.1978.9716108Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2014-10-16
Published in Print: 2014-10-1

©2014 by De Gruyter

Heruntergeladen am 30.1.2026 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/jbr-2014-0016/html?lang=de
Button zum nach oben scrollen