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Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture. By CHARLES STEWART. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1991. xix + 330 pp.
The present work is an anthropological case study of the popular understanding of evil and evil spirits (exotika) on the Greek Cycladic island of Naxos. The book is well organized and the research is based on modern, sound anthropological methods. Stewart went to Naxos where he resided and learned the Greek language in order to communicate with various people of the island.
Stewart points out that in the past scholars treated numerous beliefs on exotika as "purely survivals" from the pagan past and failed to recognize their "high degree of interdependence with Orthodox holy figures" (p. 5). He proposes "to make sense of them against the background of modern Greek culture rather than as fragments dislodged from that culture (and from each other) and primarily referable to a distant past" (p. 6). He points out as a result of...