From Demon Possession to Magic Show: Ventriloquism, Religion, and the Enlightenment
In Saducismus Triumphatus: Or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions (1681), Joseph Glanvill marveled at those so possessed by the devil that they became his mouthpiece: “For Ventriloquy, or speaking from the bottom of the Belly, 'tis a thing I think as strange and difficul...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1998
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| In: |
Church history
Year: 1998, Volume: 67, Issue: 2, Pages: 274-304 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | In Saducismus Triumphatus: Or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions (1681), Joseph Glanvill marveled at those so possessed by the devil that they became his mouthpiece: “For Ventriloquy, or speaking from the bottom of the Belly, 'tis a thing I think as strange and difficult to be conceived as any thing in Witchcraft, nor can it, I believe, be performed in any distinctness of articulate sounds, without such assistance of the Spirits, that spoke out of the Daemoniacks.” By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, ventriloquism, loosened from the confines of theological debates over demonology, had become a salient category in rationalistic discussions of religion and had taken center stage as a form of enlightened entertainment. This expanded construction of ventriloquy provided a tangible way of thinking about revealed religion as rooted in illusion—that, indeed, various wonders of the devout ear such as divine calls, the voices of demonic possession, prophecy, mystical locutions, oracles, and even the sounds of shamanic spirits had their origins in vocal deceptions that empiricists could pinpoint and magicians could demonstrate. The new ventriloquism, in its sober appraisal of all sectarian enthusiasm and religious credulity, made suspect the very claim that God could speak to or through the human. In performative practice, the ventriloquist's art shifted the focus of learned attention from the divine struggle over the soul to the protean malleability of personal identity, the fears and attractions of imposture, and the sheer pleasures of amusement. |
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| ISSN: | 1755-2613 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/3169762 |