Lure of the Arcane: The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy

by Theodore Ziolkowski

Overview

Explore 2,000 years of conspiracy in fiction.

Outstanding Academic Title, Choice

Fascination with the arcane is a driving force in this comprehensive survey of conspiracy fiction. Theodore Ziolkowski traces the evolution of cults, orders, lodges, secret societies, and conspiracies through various literary manifestations—drama, romance, epic, novel, opera—down to the thrillers of the twenty-first century.

Lure of the Arcane considers Euripides’s Bacchae, Andreae’s Chymical Wedding, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, among other seminal works. Mimicking the genre’s quest-driven narrative arc, the reader searches for the significance of conspiracy fiction and is rewarded with the author’s cogent reflections in the final chapter. After much investigation, Ziolkowski reinforces Umberto Eco’s notion that the most powerful secret, the magnetic center of conspiracy fiction, is in fact “a secret without content.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421409580
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2013
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Theodore Ziolkowski is a professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at Princeton University. He is the author of Alchemist in Literature: From Dante to the Present.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
1. The Mystery Cults of Antiquity
2. The Order of Knights Templar in the Middle Ages
3. The Rosicrucians of the Post-Reformation
4. The Lodges of the Enlightenment
5. Secret Societies of Romantic Socialism
6. Modern Variations
7. Interlude: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
8. The Playfulness of Postmodernism
Conclusion
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This is an excellent book, an original and substantial contribution. I would expect it to find many readers, not just among fellow scholars. Since conspiracy, and conspiracy fiction, is a hot topic, I could imagine this book being invaluable as a guide to a university course that sought to place Umberto Eco and Dan Brown in their long-term intellectual context.
—Ritchie Robertson, St. John’s College, Oxford

Revealing, stimulating, suggestive.
—Francis Blessington, Northeastern University

Francis Blessington

Revealing, stimulating, suggestive.

Ritchie Robertson

This is an excellent book, an original and substantial contribution. I would expect it to find many readers, not just among fellow scholars. Since conspiracy, and conspiracy fiction, is a hot topic, I could imagine this book being invaluable as a guide to a university course that sought to place Umberto Eco and Dan Brown in their long-term intellectual context.

Editorial Reviews

Conspiracies, whether attributed to mystery cults, Freemasons, Socialists, or Rosicrucians, pervade literature from Euripides to Umberto Eco, as Theodore Ziolkowski shows in Lure of the Arcane. Ziolkowski has read everything, taking even a 3,000-page German novel in his stride, and summarizes and analyses his material fascinatingly for lesser mortals.
—Times Literary Supplement

Ziolkowski is excellently placed to attempt the construction of a genre history . . . As such, his treatment of the literature and the array of texts included is predictably masterful, moving with ease from Greek and Roman mysteries in antiquity to the Medieval representations of the Knights Templar, through the Rosicrucian manifestoes and the German Enlightenment lodge novels, to the literary depictions of secret societies of Romantic Socialism.
—Nova Religio

This is a literary and cultural history for the twenty-first century: fascinating in scope and focus, striking in its attention to detail, solid in its continuity, and indisputably erudite.
—Choice

An erudite, thought-provoking argument for considering this literary engagement as a sub-genre in its own right.
—Times Literary Supplement

The wealth of examples, the lively and indeed intimate writing style, and the delicate refusal to go too far in the analysis of paranoid fantasies all contribute to a welcome dealing with mystery, secrecy, and the arcane.
—Modern Philology

From the Publisher

An erudite, thought-provoking argument for considering this literary engagement as a sub-genre in its own right.

Times Literary Supplement

The wealth of examples, the lively and indeed intimate writing style, and the delicate refusal to go too far in the analysis of paranoid fantasies all contribute to a welcome dealing with mystery, secrecy, and the arcane.

Modern Philology

This is a literary and cultural history for the twenty-first century: fascinating in scope and focus, striking in its attention to detail, solid in its continuity, and indisputably erudite.

Choice

Ziolkowski is excellently placed to attempt the construction of a genre history . . . As such, his treatment of the literature and the array of texts included is predictably masterful, moving with ease from Greek and Roman mysteries in antiquity to the Medieval representations of the Knights Templar, through the Rosicrucian manifestoes and the German Enlightenment lodge novels, to the literary depictions of secret societies of Romantic Socialism.

Nova Religio

"... The wealth of examples, the lively and indeed intimate writing style, and the delicate refusal to go too far in the analysis of paranoid fantasies all contribute to a welcome dealing with mystery, secrecy, and the arcane."

The University of Chicago Press

An erudite, thought-provoking argument for considering this literary engagement as a sub-genre in its own right.

Times Literary Supplement - Oliver Harris

Conspiracies, whether attributed to mystery cults. Freemasons, Socialists, or Rosicrucians, pervade literature from Euripides to Umberto Eco, as Theodore Ziolkowski shows in Lure of the Arcane. Ziolkowski has read everything, taking even a 3,000-page German novel in his stride, and summarizes and analyses his material fascinatingly for lesser mortals.

Times Literary Supplement - Ritchie Robertson

Ziolkowski is excellently placed to attempt the construction of a genre history... As such, his treatment of the literature and the array of texts included is predictably masterful, moving with ease from Greek and Roman mysteries in antiquity to the Medieval representations of the Knights Templar, through the Rosicrucian manifestoes and the German Enlightenment lodge novels, to the literary depictions of secret societies of Romantic Socialism.

Nova Religio - Susannah Crockford