The Possession at Loudun

It is August 18, 1634. Father Urbain Grandier, convicted of sorcery that led to the demonic possession of the Ursuline nuns of provincial Loudun in France, confesses his sins on the porch of the church of Saint-Pierre, then perishes in flames lit by his own exorcists. A dramatic tale that has inspired many artistic retellings, including a novel by Aldous Huxley and an incendiary film by Ken Russell, the story of the possession at Loudun here receives a compelling analysis from the renowned Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau. Interweaving substantial excerpts from primary historical documents with fascinating commentary, de Certeau shows how the plague of sorceries and possessions in France that climaxed in the events at Loudun both revealed the deepest fears of a society in traumatic flux and accelerated its transformation. In this tour de force of psychological history, de Certeau brings to vivid life a people torn between the decline of centralized religious authority and the rise of science and reason, wracked by violent anxiety over what or whom to believe. At the time of his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau was a director of studies at the école des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. He was author of eighteen books in French, three of which have appeared in English translation as The Practice of Everyday Life,The Writing of History, and The Mystic Fable, Volume 1, the last of which is published by The University of Chicago Press. "Brilliant and innovative. . . . The Possession at Loudun is [de Certeau's] most accessible book and one of his most wonderful."—Stephen Greenblatt (from the Foreword)

History

De Certeau, Michel

Europe

University of Chicago Press

It is August 18, 1634. Father Urbain Grandier, convicted of sorcery that led to the demonic possession of the Ursuline nuns of provincial Loudun in France, confesses his sins on the porch of the church of Saint-Pierre, then perishes in flames lit by his own exorcists. A dramatic tale that has inspired many artistic retellings, including a novel by Aldous Huxley and an incendiary film by Ken Russell, the story of the possession at Loudun here receives a compelling analysis from the renowned Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau. Interweaving substantial excerpts from primary historical documents with fascinating commentary, de Certeau shows how the plague of sorceries and possessions in France that climaxed in the events at Loudun both revealed the deepest fears of a society in traumatic flux and accelerated its transformation. In this tour de force of psychological history, de Certeau brings to vivid life a people torn between the decline of centralized religious authority and the rise of science and reason, wracked by violent anxiety over what or whom to believe. At the time of his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau was a director of studies at the école des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. He was author of eighteen books in French, three of which have appeared in English translation as The Practice of Everyday Life,The Writing of History, and The Mystic Fable, Volume 1, the last of which is published by The University of Chicago Press. "Brilliant and innovative. . . . The Possession at Loudun is [de Certeau's] most accessible book and one of his most wonderful."—Stephen Greenblatt (from the Foreword)

The culmination of de Certeau's lifelong engagement with the human sciences, this volume is both an analysis of Christian mysticism during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and an application of this influential scholar's transdisciplinary historiography.

The Mystic Fable, Volume One: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Volume 1) (Religion and Postmodernism)

Americas

More than two decades have passed since Chicago published the first volume of this groundbreaking work in the Religion and Postmodernism series. It quickly became influential across a wide range of disciplines and helped to make the tools of poststructuralist thought available to religious studies and theology, especially in the areas of late medieval and early modern mysticism. Though the second volume remained in fragments at the time of his death, Michel de Certeau had the foresight to leave his literary executor detailed instructions for its completion, which formed the basis for the present work. Together, both volumes solidify Certeau’s place as a touchstone of twentieth-century literature and philosophy, and continue his exploration of the paradoxes of historiography; the construction of social reality through practice, testimony, and belief; the theorization of speech in angelology and glossolalia; and the interplay of prose and poetry in discourses of the ineffable. This book will be of vital interest to scholars in religious studies, theology, philosophy, history, and literature.

The Mystic Fable, Volume Two: The Sixteenth And Seventeenth Centuries (Religion and Postmodernism)

A leading intellectual member of France's Freudian school, Michel de Certeau combined principles from the disciplines of religion, history, and psychoanalysis in order to redefine historiography and rethink the categories of history. In The Writing of History, de Certeau examines the West's changing conceptions of the very role and nature of history itself, from the seventeenth-century attempts to formulate a "history of man" to Freud's Moses and Monotheism with which de Certeau interprets historical practice as a function of mankind's feelings of loss, mourning, and absence. Exhaustively researched and stunningly innovative, The Writing of History is a crucial introduction to de Certeau's work and is destined to become a classic of modern thought.

The Writing of History (European Perspectives S)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Columbia University Press

Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology--to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

The Practice of Everyday Life

University of California Press

In this incisive book, Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

Reference

Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Theory & History of Literature) (English and French Edition)

Univ of Minnesota Pr

New copy. Fast shipping. Will be shipped from US.

Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Volume 17) (Theory and History of Literature)

Univ. of Minnesota Press

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Books by De Certeau, Michel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by De Certeau, Michel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Possession at Loudun

The Possession at Loudun

The Mystic Fable, Volume One: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Volume 1) (Religion and Postmodernism)

The Mystic Fable, Volume One: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Volume 1) (Religion and Postmodernism)

The Mystic Fable, Volume Two: The Sixteenth And Seventeenth Centuries (Religion and Postmodernism)

The Writing of History (European Perspectives S)

The Practice of Everyday Life

The Practice of Everyday Life

Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Theory & History of Literature) (English and French Edition)

Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Volume 17) (Theory and History of Literature)