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  • Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain
  • Barbara H. Traister (bio)
Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain. By Hilaire Kallendorf. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. xxi + 327 pp. $65.00.

Hilaire Kallendorf has written a surprising study of early modern exorcism; it surprises by its definition and choice of exorcism texts, by its rigorous exclusion of exorcism associated with witchcraft, and by the structuralist model of analysis Kallendorf has chosen. Due in large part to these surprises, her book offers a refreshing—if often unorthodox—approach to a subject [End Page 356] that is currently under discussion by literary and historical scholars such as Nancy Caciola, Sarah Ferber, and Philip C. Almond.

Because she writes about only literary texts from early modern England and Spain, Kallendorf does not deal with historical exorcism narratives. Neither does she treat literary texts in which witches incite or summon demons to pursue their enemies; Kallendorf considers these to be witchcraft rather than exorcism stories. She does, however, draw on a wide range of literary genres: dramatic comedy, satire, romance, saints' plays, dramatic tragedy, and the novel (i.e., Don Quixote). Thus, most of the texts she discusses are not those ordinarily treated in studies of exorcism. In fact, the texts might be called possession texts rather than exorcism texts because in some, particularly the tragedies, exorcism appears only in its failure or absence: "Most commonly, exorcism is absent from tragedy; when it does appear there, it fails. . . . Demonic possession resonates through the genre of tragedy, but the hope for an ultimate exorcism is forever raised and then dashed to pieces. It is the nature of the tragic experience that exorcism cannot succeed" (14–15).

Working from a model derived from Lévi-Strauss, Kallendorf isolates a number of theologemes ("constitutive units of myths bearing theological content" (9)) found in a representative group of literary texts about demonic possession and exorcism. She explains that "which aspects of the exorcism experience are highlighted or emphasized usually depends on which genre the writer is working within" (9). Using this structuralist approach she charts the frequency of occurrence of eleven theologemes (for example, "the demon's entrance into the body" and "relics, holy water, and other props") in twenty-seven literary texts (xxi).

This method allows Kallendorf to demonstrate (as scholars like Walter Cohen have done in other contexts) the close affinities between the literatures of England and Spain in the early modern period. Particularly notable is her conclusion that exorcism in many of the tragic texts provides an explanation for otherwise inexplicable evil. The demon becomes a scapegoat for the villain's evil, for only one possessed by an evil spirit could perform such cruelties as, for example, the husband in A Yorkshire Tragedy. In other genres, Kallendorf argues, the exorcism ritual is humanized as exorcists use rhetoric and logic to battle indwelling demons, and their appeal as texts stems largely from the struggle and ultimate victory of the exorcists. In all Kallendorf's analyses, genre is the most important variable, and her conclusions are nearly all genre specific.

Perhaps the volume's most important point arises from one of the theologemes: Kallendorf argues, too sporadically given the broad presence she claims for this theologeme, that in more than two-thirds of the texts she [End Page 357] cites exorcism is a synedoche for purifying and curing the body politic. If true, this suggests a more integral relationship between church and state in the literature of both England and Spain than we are used to granting.

Indeed, Kallendorf defends the presence of the "Christian legitimate marvelous" in this period, arguing that "exorcism and its texts, be they of whatever genre, are powerful testaments to the beliefs of some early modern writers in the existence of angels and demons" (198). In places, Kallendorf's analyses of her proof texts remind the reader of the mid-twentieth-century textual exegesis of scholars like Irving Ribner, Joseph Summers and Roy Battenhouse. But Kallendorf assembles her arguments from different materials than the religious allusions and analogues traced by these earlier scholars. Broadly informed by literary...

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