This intriguing book examines popular religion, traditional medicine, witchcraft, apparitions, demonology, and magic in nineteenth-century rural France. Devlin demonstrates that many of the impulses and mental processes now considered superstitious constituted a wholly reasonable response to the pressures of a harsh and impoverished life. Far from the product of a primitive mentality, many of these beliefs have survived in modern culture and can even illuminate the nature of modern mass politics.
- ISBN10 0300037104
- ISBN13 9780300037104
- Publish Date 10 September 1987
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 316
- Language English