@article{ref1,
title="The work of the devil? Theatre, the supernatural, and Montaigne's public stage",
journal="Renaissance studies",
year="2008",
author="Butterworth, Emily",
volume="22",
number="5",
pages="705-722",
abstract="This article takes as its starting point the story of the hoax ghost that Montaigne tells in Chapter 11 of Book 3 of the Essais, ‘Des boyteux’. Montaigne employs a consistent vocabulary of the theatre in describing this hoax as a ‘farce’ and a ‘battelage’. The article explores the sixteenth-century contexts this intersection between demonology and theatricality throws into relief: the traditional suspicion of the theatre as diabolical, the efforts of demonologists to quantify and explain juggling tricks, and the impact a whiff of the theatre had on both witch-finders’ certainty and sceptics’ critiques. Montaigne's chapter is also a meditation on political action, and accordingly the article examines how the theatrical model that appears through the story of the hoax ghost offers a different way of thinking and acting in a France polarized by the religious wars.<p />",
language="",
issn="0269-1213",
doi="10.1111/j.1477-4658.2008.00519.x",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-4658.2008.00519.x"
}