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Synopsis
The Devil was a commanding figure in Tudor and Stuart England. He played a leading role in the religious and political conflicts of the age, and inspired great works of poetry and drama. During the turmoil of the English Civil War, fears of a secret conspiracy of Devil-worshippers fuelled a witch-hunt that claimed at least a hundred lives.
This book traces the idea of the Devil from the English Reformation to the scientific revolution of the late seventeenth century. It shows that he was not only a central figure in the imaginative life of the age, but also a deeply ambiguous and complex one: the avowed enemy of God and his unwilling accomplice, and a creature that provoked fascination, comedy and dread.
DARREN OLDRIDGE is a senior lecturer in History at the University of Worcester, with a special interest in witchcraft and the Devil. In recent years he has also worked on representations of evil in literature and film. He is committed to taking academic work to a general audience. He has written widely on society and religion during the sixteenth ad seventeenth centuries, including Strange Histories (Routledge, 2005),
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