This volume contains sixteen essays of literary criticism, comparative literature and interdisciplinary studies by Polish, German, Welsh, French and American scholars. It features a voyage through the sea of evil from the beginning of time to the present, from the creation of the world (Hughes) to contemporary terrorism (Wajdi Mouawad). It examines all genres of literature, from Shakespeare to Hopkins and Roethke, to Dickens and Orzeszkowa, Faulkner and McCarthy, Baldwin and Burdekin. The Gesamtkunst which evil has inspired in this volume includes the Victorian Protestant novel and children's literature, hypertext (M. Joyce, Moulthrop) and metafiction (Coetzee, Munch) as well as music, philosophy, stylistics (Tolkien) and the visual arts (Tintoretto, Munch).