‘He thinks he is inspired, and he is mad’: Superstition, Fanaticism, and Deceitful Folly in Catherine II’s Comedy The Siberian Shaman
During the last decades of the eighteenth century, knowledge about Siberia inspired Catherine II to create the main character of one of her comedies, The Siberian Shaman. Taking Foucault’s dispositif-concept as its theoretical premise, the present paper discusses the historical context in which The...
| Published in: | Aries |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2024
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| In: |
Aries
Year: 2024, Volume: 24, Issue: 1, Pages: 90-133 |
| Further subjects: | B
Freemasonry
B Theosophy B Rosicrucianism B Martinism B Shamanism B Cagliostro B Tsarist Russia B Catherine the Great |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | During the last decades of the eighteenth century, knowledge about Siberia inspired Catherine II to create the main character of one of her comedies, The Siberian Shaman. Taking Foucault’s dispositif-concept as its theoretical premise, the present paper discusses the historical context in which The Siberian Shaman was written, deconstructs the identity of the comedy’s main character, and explores the socio-political purposes for which the comedy was written. By utilising the perspective of entangled history of religions and the methodology of historical discourse analysis, this paper shows that the comedy’s alleged “shamanic” content and “anti-shamanic” purpose cannot be taken for granted. Rather, the discourse in The Siberian Shaman should be read as Catherine II’s own engagement with the themes of unreason and madness within the philosophical, socio-political and religious context of the period. |
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| ISSN: | 1570-0593 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Aries
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15700593-tat00003 |