2023/02/16 by William G. Pooley · 2 voices · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices #Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies #French Literature and Criticism
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/pastj/gtad002
Compared to the history of belief, historians have had little to say about doubt. 1 By 'doubt' I do not mean the absence of belief, but those wavering attitudes that are less consistent than belief, the unresolved hesitations of uncertainty. 2 When Hamlet says, 'I doubt some foul play', he does not mean that he has ruled foul play out, but rather that he suspects uncertainly. 'I do not believe in ghosts, but I do fear them', quipped Madame du Deffand in the eighteenth century. 3 Like Hamlet's, her attitude cannot be called belief -she herself disavowed it. Yet she did, despite herself, concede some avowedly inconsistent, * This article grew from papers given at the 2020 'Decline of Magic' workshops, the Cambridge Modern European History Seminar, and '50 Years of Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic' at All Souls, Oxford in 2021. The argument benefitted greatly from questions and comments at all three, and I would particularly like to thank Jan Machielsen and Michelle Pfeffer for their work co-organizing the All Souls event, and Victoria Bates, Mark Hailwood and Laura Sangha for discussing these ideas and reading the piece. At the 2020 workshops, Miri Rubin asked participants if not the 'decline of magic', then what? The idea of dislocation is my answer to that question.