The History of the Devil, As Well Ancient as Modern

by Daniel Defoe

First published in 1726, this full-length study of the devil's role in society combines Biblical history with common sense as Defoe considers the conflict between forces of destructive evil and the benevolent Deity which controls the world.

Genres: Fiction, Religion, Classics, Horror, 18th Century, British Literature, Literature

ebook

First published January 1, 1726

About the author

Daniel Defoe was an English novelist, journalist, merchant, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translations. He has been seen as one of the earliest proponents of the English novel, and helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson. Defoe wrote many political tracts, was often in trouble with the authorities, and spent a period in prison. Intellectuals and political leaders paid attention to his fresh ideas and sometimes consulted him.
Defoe was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than three hundred works—books, pamphlets, and journals—on diverse topics, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural. He was also a pioneer of business journalism and economic journalism.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on other Defoe works I've read, I was expecting "sinners in the hand of an angry God" but was pleasantly surprised at a generally level-headed tone that was even light-hearted at times. Defoe dismisses cartoonish descriptions of the Devil as a cloven-foot monster reeking of brimstone and instead describes a more mysterious being reminiscent of Palpatine in his subtle manipulations and infiltrations. Not that the Devil hasn't been a theatrical showoff in the past, Defoe argues, but us modern people have become refined sinners who require a more sophisticated approach. Those savages in the New World are still at the primitive hammy stage, though /s.

He discusses Milton quite a bit (personally I find Dante's Inferno the far superior Christian epic) and draws on Scripture and logic in equal amounts to provide some fairly academic speculation on the Devil's character, his motivations, his hellish abode, and various abilities. Defoe finds much "common knowledge" about, and alleged accounts of, the Devil to be either merely allegorical (such as the cloven foot as a symbol of his two-faced nature) or the product of pure fancy. (Such as the man having a premarital affair who woke up to find a Devil in his room warning him to repent. Now why, asks Defoe, would the Devil of all people want someone to repent? Your guilty conscience was just making you see things.)

His attitude towards women is . . . interesting. He's certainly kinder to Eve than Milton was, yet his condemnation of witches seems more motivated by a disgust of elderly women than by any actual Satanism.

The Truth is, I think, as it was a very mean Employment for any thing that wears a human Coutenance to take up, so I must acknowledge, I think, 'twas a mean low priz'd Business for Satan to take up with; below the very Devil; below his dignity as an Angelic, tho' condemn'd Creature; below him even as a Devil; to go to talk to a parcel of ugly, deform'd, spiteful, malicious Old Women; to give them Power to do Mischief, who never had a Will, after they enter’d into the State of old Woman-Hood, to do any thing else: Why the Devil always chose the ugliest old Women he could find; whether Wizardism made them ugly, that were not so before, and whether the Ugliness, as it was a Beauty in Witchcraft, did not encrease according to the meritorious Performance in the Black-Trade?

He also speculates that devils only walk among humans in female form and includes an anecdote in which he accuses a beautiful, accomplished lady of being one such fiend - to her natural astonishment - and of course is proven correct. (Based on Defoe's other "nonfiction," including Journal of the Plague Year and The Storm, we can safely assume this account is entirely fictitious.) Considering the Salem witch trials happened during his lifetime, this is pretty damn oofy.

Unfortunately I think about half this book could've been cut, but I don't know, maybe people in the 1720s enjoyed pages and pages of semicolons.

[Ana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Infelizmente, fiquei desiludida com este livro. Não era nada o que esperava de Daniel Defoe...É claro que sabia que este seria um livro forçosamente diferente de Robinson Crusoe, porque é um género literário totalmente distinto, mas não esperei ter a sensação de que estava a ler um autor desconhecido. Acho que até prefiro "esquecer" que é o mesmo Defoe.

Esquecendo Robinson Crusoe, e atentando apenas neste título, devo dizer que não é um livro que eu aconselhe. Tem partes melhores e piores, umas mais interessantes que outras, mas essencialmente não me trouxe nada de novo. Acredito que no século em que foi escrito pudesse ter sido um obra de interesse, mas actualmente, nunca será uma obra para as "massas", mas para um "punhado" de leitores mais exigentes e interessados na história da literatura inglesa, ou no diabo e misticismos afins.

O texto é muito repetitivo. É um livro bastante extenso, mas se formos "espremer" a informação que dele retiramos, chegamos à conclusão que muito fica muito aquém das próprias promessas do autor. Defoe diz constantemente que "Vai dizer...", "Vai fazer", isto ou aquilo, e depois não concretiza, ou pelo menos não o faz como nos levou a crer inicialmente que faria.

O que menos me agradou foi o tom crítico a Milton, mais especificamente ao seu Paraíso Perdido. Penso que Defoe tentava o sarcástico e o irónico, mas sinceramente, a mensagem não me chegou dessa forma, talvez devido ao exagero que atingem as suas afirmações. A agressividade no seu discurso é tanta, e também tão repetitiva, que me passou uma imagem de um Defoe mesquinho, invejoso, ressentido e ressabiado. E fá-lo em nome de repor a "verdade" ou a "história", isto sim que só pode ser ironia, uma vez que Milton fala sobre a queda do diabo, para além de se tratar de uma obra poética. Na minha opinião Milton tinha quer em termos estruturais quer em termos de conteúdo, total liberdade, e as críticas de Defoe são no mínimo vãs e desnecessárias. Também totalmente infrutuosos são os seus poemas, que ele acrescenta ao texto, na tentativa (pareceu-me) de zombar dos de Milton.

Se ele não tivesse feito da obra de Milton algo tão recorrente no seu discurso, talvez eu até na leitura tivesse deixado passar. No entanto é impossível contornar o ataque aberto a Milton que Defoe encerra, e não era nada esta a imagem com a qual eu gostaria de ter ficado deste autor, já que como disse atrás é um escritor pelo qual nutro grande admiração.

Quanto a aspectos positivos, posso dizer que me agradou a sensação de que o autor estava muito bem documentado e que dominava o assunto sobre o qual estava a falar. Em especial em relação ao seu conhecimento sobre a Bíblia que acaba, como é natural, por ser uma das suas maiores referências. Agradou-me também as pequenas estórias que ele conta dentro da "História Política do Diabo". A estrutura dos capítulos também acho perfeita, embora como disse anteriormente, a informação retirada do capítulo não é bem a que está antecipada nas pequenas sinopses associadas a cada capítulo. E claro está, é um texto muito bem escrito, apesar de não me agradar muitas vezes o comprimento das frases, que amiúde me pareceram demasiado longas.

Resumindo:
a) não fiquei a saber nada mais do que aquilo que já sabia sobre o diabo, o que não estava à espera após ler um livro de 424 páginas que se chama "História Politica do Diabo";
b) não consigo concordar com a ideia (mais ou menos estabelecida) de que se trata de um excelente livro sarcástico e irónico. Eu só senti agressividade e aviltamento.
c) o livro é repetitivo, longo e cansativo, e muitas vezes me apeteceu desistir.
d) a boa imagem que guardava do autor Daniel Defoe ficou tocada negativamente após ler este livro;

Não posso afirmar que não gostei, porque houve partes divertidas e interessantes no livro e é um livro que está bem escrito, bem fundamentado, e bem estruturado. Para além disso mostra a humanidade no seu pior, que apesar de não ser algo bonito de se "ver", faz reflectir sobre a nossa natureza e comportamento. É também uma obra que tem a sua importância histórica no panorama literário inglês, e não só. Mas...não posso recomendar. Desculpe-me Defoe...

Post completo no blogue em:
http://linkedbooks.blogspot.pt/2013/1...

[Mark Carver · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit long and difficult at times, but Defoe's A History of the Devil is witty, insightful, rational, and entertaining. I can't say I agree with every point he makes, but he takes a level-headed approach to a subject that has long been warped by superstition, fanaticism, and blind ignorance. The Devil himself would be proud to see the record set straight (more or less) but Defoe doesn't flatter the Prince of Darkness. The Devil is real, he is evil, and he hates every one of us, and Defoe makes this abundantly clear as he views history through the Devil's eyes. It's a trip that's well worth taking.

[Declan · Rating 3 out of 5]

(read for class) that was CRAZY!
goats aren't the devil and anyone who says they are IS the devil. thanks, defoe!

[Maximilian Guebris · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...For Satan has something of religion in him..." (P.1, Ch.1, Pg.3) - This thought, though lesser satrapic for the adventurous reader, how undeservedly it will be ignored by those who will be too neglectful to open this book simply because of older prejudice (dread to think their number grows again, in 21 cent; risk not to prognosticate, if for ex. new Russian censor-law of Today will forbid it together with the other, so called, darker-educative materials) or spiritually-intellectual laziness! To this, I should only say, this work of Defoe is mostly for those, who really have conscious desire to read it. For me to read this yet-untranslated book in my country has become...I can't say an achievement, but no doubt an interest and, in bigger part of it, an enjoyment. How variously intonative this author is in his sharpest parts, showing me the Character and his all common, and full of witty irony, how perspicacious he is in the certain lines, addressed to the whole Psychodrama of Today with all its Past, dark Toiler, crooked Tool-User, and which all as ever inexorably goes into Tomorrow's!
However, there's always a some sort of reason to criticize an author a bit more than he did it himself that way, he went bravely on his own there-called "profanism". The less harmonious in all what looks like the profaned things in his book, written by very clever and sociably-experienced mind but not so poetic, to me as a poet, seem to be those bits of superficial pieces (not all of it) with critique upon Mr Milton, how Defoe pointedly titled him. The moments, when Defoe is touching especially the poetic matter, and then excusively saying "tho' I am not a poet", me-think, at least are spontaneously naïve. But such a nuances, on another side, (that's what of thought freer) are quite compensated by proving his (Defoe's) pragmatic interest that way when the old Philosophy smiles younger, awaken by the spontaneous questions Defoe makes through his Chapts.

He is very brave for his time, Mr Daniel Defoe, brave with thought and brave with the aught of thoughtlessness. I pretty sure, his polite ambition expressed in this book for the Devil to be unsatisfied with it, is certainly fulfilled. And that consequently deducted truth, he presented by the end of this book, leading the reader to learn the stages, the classes, the all steps on the ladder of Great Common Fall, that what stands like Everybody is a Devil, and what necessary should be accepted even by the Devil himself("who always and everywhere a foreigner"; "always and everywhere one of us"), and not only by that awkward person, crying: "Am I really a devil?", - all that, surely, will make a real Devil pre-grotesquely frown. And for it shouldn't be judged as a new sort of Calumny against potential New Reader, Mr Frowny or even Defoe's Foe, - "...The word Devil... The Greeks derive it from a Calumniator or false witness; for we find that Calumny was a Goddess, to whom the Athenians built altars and offer’d Sacrifices upon some solemn occasions, and they call her Διαβολὴ from whence came the masculine Διάβολος which we translate Devil." (=, Ch.4, p.41), - from my side, to all this, I'd like to remind Aristotle's word on the same "diaboly", and it simply means "the judjing". And by the end of my Review, which you may realize was deliberately written a bit in Defoe's manner, right in tone of an author like that in his certain lines, conclusively I can say about him: "He is believer."

My honest recommendations for the readers of any category, of any age above 16.

[Cláudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://umabibliotecaemconstrucao.blog...

[Jordi Jolis · Rating 1 out of 5]

The style was the problem. Too heavy and slow

[Veronica Almeida · Rating 4 out of 5]

En la línea de los relatos que estoy leyendo actualmente, para mi canal de LMHistoria (así tal cual), esta es la primera historia de Defoe. Tiene su punto, con el tema de lo que realmente le estaba ocurriendo al pobre relojero.

Si queréis leer reseñas más detalladas, entrad en mi canal de Vero World:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5a-...
O en mi Instagram:
@veroworld1

[María Pousa · Rating 2 out of 5]

La premisa es muy interesante pero se me hizo pesadísimo de leer. No sé por qué me sigo empeñando en que me puede gustar Defoe.

[Samuel Andrade · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Onde quer que Deus possa erigir uma igreja,
O Diabo aí fará erguer uma capela."

[Lucía]

I’m not sure why I found this downloaded on my phone but it was an interesting read

[FernandoG · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relato de solo tres (3) paginas del genero suspenso, terror. Se lee de inmediato.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice to know people were writing satire in 1726.

[Rosa Ramôa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Satã, assim relegado para uma condição vagabunda, errante, instável, não tem paradeiro certo, pois embora possua, em consequência da sua natureza angélica, uma espécie de império sobre os desertos líquidos e os ares, faz parte do seu castigo que ele não disponha de qualquer lugar ou espaço fixo onde descanse a planta dos pés".

[Joshua Leach · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thoughts: https://sixfootturkey.blogspot.com/20...

[Alethleia · Rating 4 out of 5]

¿No es más razonable no creer en el Diablo que asustarse de él continuamente?