This thing of darkness : : perspectives on evil and human wickedness / / edited by Richard Paul Hamilton and Margaret Sonser Breen.

• Superior document: At the interface/Probing the boundaries ; 7
• TeilnehmendeR: Hamilton, Richard Paul,; Breen, Margaret Sönser,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam ;, New York, NY : : Rodopi,, [2004]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2004
• Language: English
• Series: At the interface/probing the boundaries ; 7.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.
• Notes: "The ten essay were originally presented at the First Global Conference on Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, held in March 2000, in Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University"--Page 4 of cover.

Written across the disciplines of art history, literature, philosophy, sociology, and theology, the ten essays comprising the collection all insist on multidimensional definitions of evil. Taking its title from a moment in Shakespeare's Tempest when Prospero acknowledges his responsibility for Caliban, this collection explores the necessarily ambivalent relationship between humanity and evil. To what extent are a given society's definitions of evil self-serving? Which figures are marginalized in the process of identifying evil? How is humanity itself implicated in the production of evil? Is evil itself something fundamentally human? These questions, indicative of the kinds of issues raised in this collection, seem all the more pressing in light of recent world events. The ten essays were originally presented at the First Global Conference on Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, held in March 2000 in Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University.

Table of Contents

Editorial foreword / Rob Fisher -- Preface / Richard Paul Hamilton -- 1. Twentieth-century vampire literature: intimations of evil and power / Katri Lehtinen -- 2. Evil encounters with "others" in Tayeb Salih and Toni Morrison: the case of Mustafa Saeed and Sula Peace / Salwa Ghaly -- 3. A visual theology of evil and redemption? Watt's Eve trilogy and Burne-Jones's Altarpiece of the nativity / Kathy M. Bullough -- 4. Or image of that horror?: imagining radical evil / David H. Fisher -- 5. Hier ist kein Warum?: evil at the limits of understanding / Richard Paul Hamilton -- 6. Condemned to artifice and prevented from being a pirate: how prisoners convicted of terribel crimes recognize themselves in discourse / Diana Medlicott -- 7. The apostasy of the baptized: Christians and the Holocaust / Deirdre Burke -- 8. The exorcist: personification of human wickedness or upholder of religious duties? / Sandeep Singh Chohan -- 9. Wandering the heath: Niebuhr and the need for realism / Rob Fisher -- 10. Prohibition and transgression: Georges Betaille and the possibility of affirming evil / Jones Irwin.