Disenchantment of the word in sixteenth-century Dutch farce

Representations of exorcism in farces written and performed in the sixteenth-century Low Countries at first sight merely testify to their authors’ propensity for the grotesque and critical stance towards Roman Catholic rituals. This paper argues that these farcical exorcism episodes, besides ridiculing exorcism and expressing scepticism in matters of demonology, also undermined beliefs concerning the potency of language. Analysis of the ritual as represented in farce and the metadiscursive comments surrounding it points to a conception of the ceremony as “administering” inherently powerful wor... Mehr ...