Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain (review)

Over the last two decades there has been an explosion of scholarly research and publication on witchcraft, a process which has engendered interest on a number of related historical issues. Among the most important of which are the related phenomena of demonic possession and exorcism. Hilaire Kallendorf's Exorcism and Its Texts is, therefore, a timely addition to our knowledge on what is a growing area of study among both historians and literary scholars.

Although aware of some of the wider recent historical writing on the subject, Kallendorf's main interest is with exorcism and possession in the literature of England and Spain. After a brief introduction examining various theoretical positions, a series of chapters are devoted to specific topics. In a chapter on demoniacs and the drama the author demonstrates how exorcism on stage can be interpreted as a metaphor for a purificatory act of exorcizing the body politic. In another chapter, dealing with the picaresque, satirical poetry, and satire, Kallendorf argues the importance of the experience of demonic possession, whether genuine or simulated, as a source of knowledge. The author then turns to how the interlude and hagiographical drama leads to the humanization of possession and exorcism, how tragedy in the drama can be seen as the absence or failure of exorcism, and also examines an important and unexpected theme in a chapter dealing with self-exorcism and the rise of the novel. There is then a final, brief, epilogue, in which the category of "demonic possession" is problematized, and it is argued that it could be interpreted in various ways by early modern observers, and hence that modern scholars should be wary of oversimplifying it. Although there may be much to argue with in Kallendorf's interpretations, there is no doubt that a powerful and informed scholarly imagination is being brought to bear on a disparate body of literary materials. The analysis of Spanish literary references to demonic possession and exorcism is especially welcome, while, overall, the author is massively successful in demonstrating how the apparently peripheral phenomena of demonic possession and exorcism were of considerable importance in the early modern period, and argues for the existence and importance of what is termed a "Christian legitimate marvellous." Not everybody may be convinced that the period in question witnessed the development of an "integrated notion of selfhood," but Kallendorf's analysis of the subject with this concept in mind does provide an unusual perspective.

Despite the undoubted strengths of this book, Kallendorf's status as a literary scholar is reflected by a lack of awareness of some of the more recent, and indeed less recent, writing on English witchcraft-cum-possession cases. The extremely important case of Anne Gunter is missed, while there is also a very interesting connection of which the author is apparently unaware. Kallendorf argues that the most vocal advocate of the "Christian legitimate marvellous" was Torquato Tasso, this being demonstrated in his Gerusalemme liberata. It would therefore be interesting to hear what Kallendorf might make of the fact that the translator of that work into English, the Yorkshire gentleman Edward Fairfax, experienced the possession and bewitchment of two of his daughters in the early 1620's. Fairfax wrote a lengthy account of his and their sufferings which demonstrated that the "Christian legitimate marvellous" was evidently working as strongly in a godly household in northern England as it was in the texts Kallendorf so expertly studies.