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Zusatztext "…mind-blowingly insightful… I cannot recommend the book enough!" - Huffington Post"Fernie offers an uncommonly inviting study that readers can sink their discriminating teeth into with gusto. He presents an irresistible, meticulously prepared, expertly executed, and aesthetic smorgasbord in the form of one savory reading after another of assorted literary texts… Highly recommended." -CHOICE"This is a profoundly important book. It addresses some of the hardest moral and theological questions we encounter in our struggles to understand literature and life... We need more of this kind of criticism." - Literature and Theology"Fernie's remarkable book is itself all of these: rich, disturbing and personal - it may, indeed, be more than a little tinged with the demonic. The field of literature dealing with the demonic is vast and varied, and Fernie's wide-ranging exploration does not shrink back from the extent of its material.... The trajectory of Fernie's argument is eclectic in the best possible way where every transition is motivated and matters. The book is overwhelming, though not because of its staggering scope, but because of the originality of its argument and the sheer boldness of Fernie's readings.... Often colloquial, at times very funny indeed.... It is a challenge in the best possible sense, and it is an immensely gratifying read." -Shakespeare Jahrbuch"The book blasts away at inherent contradictions that traditional theology and social values try to protect unscathed from critical scrutiny. This is what makes this book so vital to our time, probably one of the most important books of literary criticism to come out in recent years.... [T]his is a book that connects the craft of critical thought to the real experience of our lives.... Fernie’s Demonic is a journey we should all take. We will not be the same at the end."--Cahiers Élisabéthains "Literature and Experience? Ewan Fernie's subtitle will alarm literary scholars who have taken in with their mother's milk the doxa that the study of literature should as far as possible be objective and dispassionate, cordoned off from experience (at least, that of the reader-Historical experience is another matter.) But the bold claim of this book is precisely that professional students of literature should have the pluck to engage with literary texts in an undefended, unapologetically personal, way-should lay themselves open to texts, allowing themselves to be possessed, and disturbed, by their power... the demonic is for Fernie a way of recognizing a constitutive, but profoundly ambivalent, feature of human experience, namely our species' 'potential for creativity over against what merely is'... Macbeth is a central text, though it's hardly alone: one of the most impressive features of the book is the sheer range of authors Fernie manages to recruit to the Devil's party... this is for me one of the most bracing and spirited books of literary criticism of recent years; we need more such attempts to reconnect literature with life." - The Review of English Studies"Fernie's interpretative scope reminds one of Erich Auerbach or George Steiner. His philosophical scrutiny is at the same time daring and exigent, conscientious and refined. Interpretations of Macbeth and Paradise Lost, along with those that follow of Dostoevsky's Demons and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, stand out as a book within a book. As in a natural vortex, our attention is whirled to the bottom of the problem and, after a memorable experience, released back to the academic decorum of reading literary criticism. An impressive accomplishment! Throughout the book one feels disturbed by literature and responsible to experience. The Demonic seems to have been written with the Kierkegaardian intention to keep 'the wound of negativity' open and with a refusal to derive 'positive, cosy joy from life." - Belgrade Bells"Provocative and profound – a thrilling and radical account of the allure of...
