Demons and Heretics in Transitional Culture: Historical-Literary and Attitudinal Contexts in a Research Perspective

Abstract

The actualization of the study of the irrational in the interpretation of man and communication with society in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries can be explained by modern ideas about the limitless incognizability of the phenomenon of life. Rational knowledge is accompanied by knowledge of the exceptional significance of the belief in the influence of otherworldliness for certain periods of history when the totality of conflicts, clashes, and features in people’s behavior is explained through an appeal to images of demonic properties. Historians, philologists, and theologians from various Russian academic centers discuss the representation of “otherworldliness” and the prospects of its study. The panelists discuss the studies of the functional properties of otherworldliness in various spheres of life and art and its manifestation in the genres of oral and written literature. Finally, they put forward ideas about the further directions of scholarly research in the sphere.