Oedipus and the Devil

by Lyndal Roper

This bold and imaginative book marks out a different route towards understanding the body, and its relationship to culture and subjectivity. Amongst other subjects, Lyndal Roper deals with the nature of masculinity and feminity.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Witches, Religion, Witchcraft, Politics, Gender and Sexuality

264 pages, Paperback

First published May 12, 1994

About the author

Lyndal Roper, FRHistS, FBA, is an Australian historian and academic. She was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford in 2011. She is a fellow of Oriel College, an honorary fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and the author of a variety of groundbreaking works on witchcraft.

Reviews

[saizine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating collection of essays; I must admit that I am intrigued by the argument that witchcraft accusations often stemmed not from misogyny and sexual antagonism but from anxieties surrounding maternity, motherhood, and fertility (i.e. a common pattern was the post-menopausal, infertile woman accused of threatening or harming an infant or its mother). I also appreciate the argument for a true history of the body rather than a history of bodily discourse, and paying attention to individual (or as close to the individual as we can get) interior worlds in studying historical phenomena. If you're just picking and choosing essays I'd recommend 'Will and honour: sex, words and power in Augsburg', 'Blood and codpieces: masculinity in the early modern German town', and 'Witchcraft and fantasy in early modern Germany', but this is certainly a well-organized and well-written volume that is equally interesting read as a start-to-finish book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the study of early modern witchcraft, gender relations, identity construction, and how to employ a psychoanalytic perspective in a way that's useful in writing history.

[sj]

me when a book called oedipus and the devil uses freud: 😮

[Cali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unbelievably on board for Roper's diagnoses: The challenge of reconstructing early modern subjectivities, particularly in relation to the supernatural and "pre-modern self," keeps me awake at night. Depending on the day, the phrase "pre-modern" self makes me want to defenestrate half of my field. Roper expertly identifies the problem, but I cannot bring myself to accept psychoanalysis as the solution. Aspects are worthwhile, including her emphasis on the individual psyche and contemporary patriarchal wrestling, but I cannot in good faith entertain a wholly Oedipal reading of witches. 3.5 stars.

[Chris Webber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well organized and written, delving into gender stereotypes and sexual mentality back in the early catholic/protestant era.

[Julaine]

Date Purchased??

[Lucy Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyndal Roper is always a pleasure to read. thought-provoking analysis of subjectivity and the best work on returning gender studies to the body that I've read.

[Scarlett Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating account of the role of the psychic and the subconscious in early modern gender roles and witch hunts. Explores how psychological conflict around gender and sexuality played out in Germany during a period of upheaval, namely the Reformation.

This collection makes a strong case against prevailing linear narratives (from Elias, Weber…) of increasingly effective social discipline and the emergence of wholly new version of self consciousness and interiority in the early modern period (to coincide with early capitalism, the reformation, increased urbanisation etc..). When it came to sexuality this era, Roper suggests, does not necessarily represent a newly stable patriarchal order through the expansion of council powers and ‘discipline’. For instance, intensification of public moralising and legislation (which sought to create and ideal patriarchal household by curtailing wayward mens drinking and ‘whoring’ or women’s sexuality), may have actually worked counterproductively to heighten awareness of the failures of family life to live up to the Protestant ideal.

Roper challenges us to rethink how we categorise the rational and irrational. Further she demands we see how the supposedly rational and irrational are dependent on one another. In this vein, I found the essay on the use of magic (crystal balls in this case) in early capitalism to be particularly interesting and a somewhat ominous foreshadowing of symbiosis between surveillance and capitalism.

Roper argues for the primacy of the bodily experience and interior or subconscious world in shaping phenomena which may seem strange and ‘irrational’ to our eyes. For instance, she argues that witchcraft was not necessarily a result of misogyny but of psychic conflict among women, and men too, and issues of identity. Many cases she investigates in Augsburg specifically include women who have recently given birth accusing their lying-in maids (usually older, less affluent women) of harming their child with magic due to envy. The dynamic Roper observes in these accusations of the splitting off of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mother, the projection of the grief of losing a child, fear, and even what we might see as post-partum depression/psychosis onto the ‘other’ was highly engaging. Her approach is closely related to the cases she investigated, so it leaves much space for further investigation of individual accusations or spates of them with psychoanalytic methods.

Throughout, these essays caution against viewing the early modern era as categorically different from our own, arguing for some shared psychic elements (the primacy of parents in early life,) Roper acknowledges that there were many many differences - widespread belief in ghosts and devils that walked the earth - but this for her this does not place them beyond psychological or psychoanalytic analysis using tools created long since. Does early modern peoples lack of awareness of the ‘Oedipus complex’ for example, mean we cannot find its echoes through time?

Overall, I am rather convinced of her argument that witchcraft accusations are ‘not products of realism, and they cannot be analysed with the methods of historical realism.’ To do so, risks ignoring the fact that many accused witches may have believed themselves to be so, and risks stripping the past of what makes it distinctive whilst potentially bulldozing over our shared psychic realities.

Despite some issues with the notion of witches as colluding in a sadistic-masochistic game with their interrogators and torturers - I do feel I gained startling new insight into this historical period through this collection of essays. Each essay is compellingly written and full arguments that remain highly relevant almost 30 years later.

[Neal Spadafora · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, Roper has her finger on central problems in the history of sexuality. For example, investigating how gender might be a category of historical analysis in 16th-century Germany, Roper surmises that “a movement which changes the sexual status of its clergy, turning models of chastity into exemplars of matrimonial harmony, clearly transforms the meaning of manhood.”

As Roper astutely observes, this Reformed transformation of manhood’s meaning was constructed in opposition to the Catholic priest, who figured as a castrated man unable to embody the new masculine ideal of a household patriarch as master of his wife. Depicting what she reads as an unresolved crisis in early modern Catholic masculinity, Roper contends that mastery of one’s woman surfaced as the coveted yet inconsistently realized horizon of Reformed masculinity.

Yet, as the quote above indicates, Roper hesitates to assign a definitive causal weight to this crisis of masculinity. Occasionally, Roper positions the crisis in masculinity as a consequence of political and ecclesial developments. At other times, such as in her commentary on the closure of the covenants and brothels, she situates masculinity as a driving force that shaped a Reformed world where men could not tolerate women who were anything less than honorable wives.

In part, Roper understands the causal force of male sexual desires through a theory of subjectivity, as she boldly claims: “Without a theory of subjectivity, I believe, we shall be unable either to account for the tenacious hold of sexual stereotypes in the present or the past, or to explain the attraction of particular rhetorics of gender at particular historical moments.” Roper argues that the spectacles of masculinity and sexuality in 16th-century Germany uncannily mirror the crises of masculinity that surface across disparate historical moments. Given her insistence that such repetitions elude any strictly historicist accounting and refuse to settle into the contingencies that should differentiate one epoch from another, she turns to modern, specifically Freudian, theories of subject formation to articulate how sexual difference flares in similar forms throughout history. In this sense, Roper’s turn to psychoanalysis is a refusal of rigid periodization techniques that obscure recognition of continuities over time, such as anxieties about bodily sexual difference and male passivity.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe a little less witchcraft focused than I was hoping for? But still an interesting read. Surprisingly a lot quicker to get through than I was anticipating, though there were a few points that dragged a tiny bit. I will say, I wish I had read this before graduating, because I can imagine it would have come in really handy for writing essays...

[Barbora Jirincova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Musím říct, že jsem ještě nečetla žádnou knihu, která by dějiny genderu (v raném novověku) odhalovala s takovou pokorou. Kromě toho, že autorka se veřejně přiznává ke spoustě ve feministických kruzích "heretickým" myšlenkám, tak používá inovativní metody a dokonce se odvažuje tvrdit, že možná s těmi dějinami mentalit děláme jako historici příliš velký humbuk, že možná lidé byli vždy lidé a pochopit je nemusí být zase až tak složité. No, to je jen výběr ze zajímavých myšlenek, které autorka do knihy vměstnala. A k tomu se zabývá velmi fundovaně tím, co slibuje v názvu - tedy dějinami genderu, sexuality a magie (čarodějnictví) v raně novověkém Německu.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A autora busca compreender a construção sociocultural da feminilidade e da masculinidade a partir de estudos de caso de processos de feitiçaria de Augsburgo no decorrer dos séculos XVI e XVII. Nesta obra, a historiadora procura sobretudo entender e explorar a interação entre sobrenatural e o mundo natural em uma dimensão psicológica da cultura popular. Ela mistura psicanalise e teoria feminista. O que significava a masculinidade e a feminilidade em um universo mental dominado pela magia? Qual foi o impacto cultural da Reforma e Contrarreforma neste mundo mágico e sua relação com o gênero? Como eram as fronteiras entre o racional e o desenhado irracionalmente, e como isso afetou a vida psíquica dos homens e mulheres? Judith Butler, Freud, Foucault, Certeau e os estudos clássicos de Nobert Elias sobre a reforma dos costumes e a formação do Estado moderno são alguns autores que a autora recorre para debater essas questões. Em alguns momentos, não sei se ela conseguiu me convencer, mas acredito que seja porque eu não entendo quase nada de psicanálise, porém acho o debate que ela faz sobre identidade, a dimensão psicológica e a construção da narrativa dos processos de feitiçaria tentando compreender a subjetividade dos seus objetos de pesquisa muito interessante.

[Brianna Andersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting.