Blasphemy : impious speech in the West from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century / Alain Cabantous ; translated by Eric Rauth.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cabantous, Alain.

Series:

European perspectives

Standardized Title:

Histoire du blasphème en Occident. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Blasphemy--History.

Blasphemy.

History.

Physical Description:

x, 288 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2002]

Language Note:

Translated from the French.

Summary:

The book takes us on a journey through the Christian West with braggarts, craftsmen, soldiers, sailors, and their coarse, forbidden exchanges. More than simply an exhaustive inventory of the uses of and bans on blasphemy, the book is a lively analysis of the relationship between the blasphemer, the machinery of language, and that of repression.

Contents:

Introduction: Language and the Sacred 1

Part 1 Ecclesiastic Time: A Chronic Sin

1. A Sin's Meaning 9

2. Blasphemy and the Counter-Reformation 22

3. God's Holy Church Against Blasphemy 39

Part 2 The Princes' Time: Powers of State Against Blasphemy

4. Kings Against Blasphemy 49

5. Sounding the Call: Municipalities, the Bourgeois, and the Seigniories 69

Part 3 Human Time: Blasphemy's Social Milieus

6. Emblematic Swearers 81

7. The Other Reality 96

Part 4 Cleric Versus Philosophe: Blasphemy and Public Space

8. A Loosening Grip 119

9. Magistrate, Theologian, and the Ways of Justice 132

Part 5 An Era of Transition: Blasphemy on Trial

10. Sacredness Elsewhere? 151

11. Speech and Expiation 163

Part 6 The Age of Blasphemy: Meanings of a Word

12. The Telltale Speech of Sin? 181

13. What Blasphemy Said About Society 191

Conclusion: Blasphemy's Comeback 201.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [265]-274) and index.

ISBN:

0231118767

OCLC:

47254250