In present-day Greece many people still speak of
exotikNB--mermaids, dog-form creatures, and other monstrous beings
similar to those pictured on medieval maps. Challenging the
conventional notion that these often malevolent demons belong
exclusively to a realm of folklore or superstition separate from
Christianity, Charles Stewart looks at beliefs about the exotikNB
and the Orthodox Devil to demonstrate the interdependency of
doctrinal and local religion. He argues persuasively that students
who cling to the timeworn folk/official distinction will find it
impossible to appreciate the breadth and coherence of contemporary
Greek cosmology. Like the medieval cartographers' fantasies, which
were placed on the "edges" of the physical world, Greek demons
cluster in marginal locations--outlying streams, wells, and caves.
The demons are near enough to the community, however, to attack
humans--causing illness or death, according to Stewart's
informants. Drawing on an unusual range of sources, from the
author's fieldwork on the Cycladic island of Naxos to Orthodox
liturgical texts, this book pictures the exotikNB as elements of a
Greek cognitive map: figures that enable individuals to navigate
the traumas and ambiguities of life. Stewart also examines the
social forces that have by turns disposed the Greek people to
embrace these demons as indicative of links with the classical past
or to eschew them as signs of backwardness and ignorance.
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