Elizabethan Demonology by Thomas Alfred Spalding ~ Full Audiobook [history]

Elizabethan Demonology by Thomas Alfred Spalding audiobook.

Genre: history

Written as a scholarly essay, Elizabethan Demonology investigates what educated and ordinary people in England believed about devils, witches, possession, and unseen spiritual forces during the Reformation and the decades that followed. Thomas Alfred Spalding argues that to read Elizabethan drama clearly, especially the plays of William Shakespeare, modern readers must recover the religious assumptions and folk ideas that shaped daily life and public imagination. Moving between theology, popular superstition, and literary evidence, Spalding traces how older pagan or foreign gods were reinterpreted as lesser spirits, how fear of diabolic agency found support in sermons and pamphlets, and how these convictions surfaced on the stage in vivid scenes of temptation, prophecy, and haunting. Along the way he pays particular attention to Shakespeare's handling of the supernatural, using close readings to show how an audience that took demons seriously would have heard certain words, symbols, and moral stakes differently than we do today. Expanded from papers first delivered to the New Shakespeare Society, this compact work is both a window into early modern belief and a guide for readers who want to understand why the devil felt so real in Elizabethan literature. citeturn0search1turn0search7turn0search0

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:19:09) Chapter 02

(00:42:53) Chapter 03

(01:01:28) Chapter 04

(01:26:45) Chapter 05

(01:53:36) Chapter 06

(02:18:31) Chapter 07

(02:44:28) Chapter 08

(02:59:38) Chapter 09

(03:25:28) Chapter 10

(03:48:14) Chapter 11

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices