The Damned and the Elect
Guilt in Western Culture

A comparative cultural history of figures such as oedipus, Judas and Faust, from antiquity to modern times.

Friedrich Ohly (Author), Linda Archibald (Translated by), George Steiner (Foreword by)

9780521154666, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 August 2010

226 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.29 kg

Review of the hardback: 'The interest and value of this study lie in the range of material, and in the clarity with which the material is presented.' J. P. Stern

The stark theological polarities of damnation and salvation have haunted representations of guilt in Western culture for thousands of years. Friedrich Ohly's classic study The Damned and the Elect, first published in English in 1992, offers a comparative cultural history of figures such as Oedipus, Judas and Faust, from antiquity, through the Middle Ages, into modern times. Looking at the works of writers such as Sophocles, Dante, Marlowe, Bunyan, Goethe, and Thomas Mann (and illustrating his ideas with reference to representation in the visual arts), Ohly's wide-ranging arguments weave deftly across different cultures and periods to illuminate one of the most salient themes in Western literature.

List of illustrations
1. Judas and Gregorius
2. The despair of Judas
3. The penance on the rock
4. The Mathematicus: putting the blame on Fate
5. The Vorauer Novelle: 'one shall be taken and the other left
6. Judas and Everyman
7. Faust: saved or damned? 8. Bunyan, Gunther, and Lenore
9. Two novels by Thomas Mann: Doktor Faustus and Der Erwahlte
10. Sophocles' King Oedipus and Oedipus at Colonos
Appendix: unpublished Life of Judas from the Schaffhausen Lectionary
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Literary studies: general [DSB]