From demon possession to magic show: Ventriloquism, religion, and the enlightenment

Church History

Volumn 67, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 274-304

  Schmidt, Leigh Eric ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 67649304788     PISSN: 00096407     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3169762     Document Type: Article

References (143)

1. Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus: Or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions (London: J. Collins, 1681), 2: 64
2. See Hillel Schwartz, The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles (New York: Zone Books, 1996), 132-37
3. Otherwise the scholarship is dominated by critical theorists, who, interested in the polyphony of discrepant "voices" within texts and in the problem of authorial voice, have taken up ventriloquism as a trope. See, for example, Annabel Patterson, "'They Say' or We Say: Protest and Ventriloquism in Early Modern England," in Historical Criticism and the Challenge of Theory, ed. Janet Levarie Smarr (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 145-66
4. David Goldblatt, "Ventriloquism: Ecstatic Exchange and the History of Artwork," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51 (1993): 389-98
5. and Christopher Looby, Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 165-74
6. For an especially evocative treatment of rational recreations and illusionist demonstrations in early modern Europe, see Barbara Maria Stafford, Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994)
7. For other important treatments of the magical exhibitionism of the Enlightenment, see Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), esp. 27-33
8. Grete de Francesco, The Power of the Charlatan, trans. Miriam Beard (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939), 229-49
9. Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978), 3-4, 64-76, 81
10. James W. Cook Jr., "From the Age of Reason to the Age of Barnum: The Great Automaton Chess-Player and the Emergence of Victorian Cultural Illusionism," Winterthur Portfolio 30 (Winter 1995): 231-57
11. P. T. Barnum, The Humbugs of the World (New York: Carleton, 1866), 294
12. For representative works in the rich tradition of skeptical magic, see Harry Houdini, A Magician among the Spirits (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1924)
13. John Mulholland, Beware Familiar Spirits (New York: Scribner's, 1938)
14. James Randi, Conjuring (New York: St. Martin's, 1992)
15. The Enlightenment side of the magical tradition, along with that of the stage, has generally been bracketed out by American historians of religion and magic. For an overview of occultist practices in early America, see Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), esp. 67-97
16. The controversy over the links between Renaissance Hermeticism and natural philosophy on the European side has generated a considerable literature. See, for example, Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964)
17. Brian Vickers, ed., Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)
18. Charles Webster, From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)
19. On the history of the Enlightenment construction of "religion," see Peter Harrison, "Religion"and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
20. Peter Byrne, Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism (London: Routledge, 1989)
21. J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)
22. Frank E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959)
23. Michael Heyd, "Be Sober and Reasonable": The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 1995)
24. J. A. I. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies, 1660-1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
25. On modern ocularcentrism, see especially Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
26. David Michael Levin, ed., Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
27. For the most sustained theorizing of the sensorium and sound, though presented within the near universal framework of the triumph of visuality, see Walter J. Ong, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967)
28. On religious orality, especially preaching, see the work of Harry S. Stout, particularly, "Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly 34 (1977): 519-41
29. Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason," in The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: Citadel, 1945), 1:596
30. Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man, ed. John Pell (New York: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1940), 231. I present the religious dimensions of this piety, along with other aspects of the Enlightenment critique, in a book-in-progress on "Hearing Voices."
31. Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584; reprint, London: Rowan and Littlefield, 1973), 101
32. The early modern vocabulary for soothsaying and divination was very rich; other terms used for one given to prophetic, demonic, or ventriloquial speech included ob, python or pythonist, engastrimyth, and gastriloquist. See Thomas Blount, Glossographia: Or, a Dictionary, Interpreting all such Hard Words, Whether Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Teutonick, Belgick, British or Saxon, as Are Now Used in Our Refined English Tongue (London: Newcomb, 1656) as well as the pertinent entries in the Oxford English Dictionary
33. For background on the problems the Witch of Endor created for Christian commentaries, see Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), esp. 18-21, 54-56
34. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923), 1:352, 448, 470-71
35. Scot, Discoverie, 114, 121
36. Glanvill, Saducismus, 2:64
37. On possession as "sacred theater," see Clarke Garrett, Spirit Possession and Popular Religion: From the Camisards to the Shakers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), esp. 4-6, 86-87
38. For these well-known and oft-scrutinized cases, see David D. Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History, 1638-1692 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991), 149, 202, 207-211 (see as well the voices in the case of Eunice Cole, 225-29)
39. Increase Mather, An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (Boston: n.p., 1684), 140
40. For English examples, see C. L'Estrange Ewen, Witchcraft and Demonianism (London: Heath Cranton, 1933), 148-49, 336, 452
41. For a recent interpretation that insightfully highlights the vocality of possession, see Jane Kamensky, Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 150-79
42. Thomas Ady, A Perfect Discovery of Witches (London: Brome, 1661), 78
43. Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil," in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (London: Bohn, 1839-1845), 3: 434
44. Francis Hutchinson, An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft (London: Knaplock, 1718), 8-9
45. See also Hobbes, "Elements of Philosophy," in Works, 1: 498
46. John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (London: J. M., 1677), 165-66
47. John Wesley, "Letter to the Author of 'The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists Compared,'" in The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. (London: Wesleyan Conference, 1872), 9: 7
48. Andrew Manship, Thirteen Years' Experience in the Itinerancy (Philadelphia: Higgins and Perkinpine, 1856), 50
49. William Swayze, Narrative of William Swayze, Minister of the Gospel (Cincinnati: Methodist Book Room, 1839), 81-82
50. Frederick H. Quitman, A Treatise on Magic, Or, on the Intercourse between Spirits and Men (Albany: Balance, 1810), 45-48
51. Robert Scott, Letters to the Rev. Frederick H. Quitman, Occasioned by His Late Treatise on Magic (Poughkeepsie: Adams, 1810), 26-29
52. After ventriloquism became popular on stage, various others followed up La Chapelle's treatise with their own investigations of the acoustics and anatomy of the art. See, for example, John Gough, "Facts and Observations to Explain the Curious Phenomenon of Ventriloquism," Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts 2 (June 1802): 122-29
53. F. M. S. Lespagnol, Dissertation sur l'engastrimisme (Paris: Didot Jeune, 1811)
54. Anthelme Richerand, Elements of Physiology, trans. G. J. M. De Lys (Philadelphia: Dobson, 1813), 506-507
55. "Voice," Boston Medical Intelligencer 22 July 1823, 39
56. "Ventriloquism, " Boston Medical Intelligencer, 31 August 1824, 67
57. John Mason Good, The Book of Nature (1826; reprint, Hartford: Belknap and Hamersley, 1845), 257-62
58. George Smith Sutton, A Treatise on Ventriloquism with Extracts from the Opinions of Several Authors Respecting that Extraordinary Gift of Human Faculty (New Haven: n.p., 1833)
59. Joannes Baptista de la Chapelle, Le Ventriloque, on l'engastrimythe (Paris: Duchesne, 1772), 341, 471-78
60. La Chapelle, Le Ventriloque, xxi, 323-60, 419-22, 438-39
61. Thomas Reid, "Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man," in The Works of Thomas Reid (Charlestown, Mass.: Etheridge, 1813), 2:83, 309, 322
62. Reid, Works, 2: 319-20
63. Encyclopædia Britannica; Or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature (Philadelphia: Dobson, 1798), 18: 639-41
64. Dugald Stewart, "Philosophy of the Human Mind," in The Works of Dugald Stewart (Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown, 1829), 3:168-69
65. Stewart, Works, 1:108, 137-51
66. Stewart, Works, 3:166-71
67. David Brewster, Letters on Natural Magic (London: John Murray, 1842), 171-72
68. See also Gough, "Facts and Observations."
69. Readings that I have found especially insightful for my purposes include: Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 235-48
70. Butler, Awash, 225-28
71. Steven Watts, The Romance of Real Life: Charles Brockden Brown and the Origins of American Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), esp. 54-58, 82-89, 184-85
72. Bernard Rosenthal, "The Voices of Wieland," in Critical Essays on Charles Brockden Brown, ed. Bernard Rosenthal (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981), 104-125. Rosenthal and Watts both do an especially fine job of locating the novel within Brown's wider deistic suspicions about revealed religion
73. Brown, Wieland, 194, 234
74. Brown, Wieland, 163, 243
75. On the religious hothouse, see especially Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)
76. Gordon S. Wood, "Evangelical America and Early Mormonism," New York History 61 (1980): 359-86
77. Brewster, Letters, 5, 176-78
78. Dugald Stewart, "Observations on Ventriloquism," Edinburgh Journal of Science 9 (1828): 250-52
79. For the original account, see George Francis Lyon, The Private Journal of Captain G. F. Lyon of H.M.S. Hecla, during the Recent Voyage of Discovery under Captain Parry (London: Murray, 1825), 149-50, 359-74
80. Waldemar Bogoras, The Chukchee, vol. 7 of Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History (Leiden: Brill, 1904-1909), 435-39
81. See also Sutton, Treatise, 26-29
82. Elisha Kent Kane, Arctic Explorations in the Years 1853, '54, '55 (Philadelphia: Childs and Peterson, 1856), 2: 126-27
83. W. H. Davenport Adams, Curiosities of Superstition, and Sketches of Some Unrepealed Religions (London: Masters, 1882), 274-78
84. Charles Joseph Pecor, The Magician on the American Stage, 1752-1874 (Washington, D.C.: Emerson and West, 1977), 69-71
85. When one ventriloquist advertised a special show in 1802 for black Philadelphians, he was forced to cancel the performance. See Pecor, Magician, 88-89
86. George W. Kirbye, Origin and History of Ventriloquism; with Full and Comprehensive Instruction in the Art (Philadelphia: Brinckloe, 1861)
87. [Thomas D. Hurst], The Practical Magician, and Ventriloquist's Guide (New York: Hurst, 1876)
88. and Harry Kennedy, How to Become a Ventriloquist (New York: Tousey, 1891)
89. Paul Garnault, History of Ventriloquism, trans. George Havelock Helm (Brooklyn: n.p., [1900?]), 8, 41-12
90. Francis Bacon, The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Ellis, and Douglas Heath (London: Longman, 1859), 3: 156, 162, 164
91. John Beckmann, A History of Inventions and Discoveries, trans. William Johnston (London: Longman, 1817), 3: 269-70
92. See also William Hooper, Rational Recreations in which the Principles of Numbers and Natural Philosophy Are Clearly and Copiously Elucidated, 4 vols. (London: Davis, 1784)
93. Philip Astley, Natural Magic: Or, Physical Amusements Revealed (London: n.p., 1785)
94. Guiseppe Pinetti, Physical Amusements and Diverting Experiments (London: n.p., 1784)
95. [Henri Decremps], The Conjurer Unmasked; Being a Clear and Full Explanation of all the Surprizing Performances Exhibited as well in this Kingdom as on the Continent, trans. Thomas Denton (London: Stalker, 1788)
96. Paine, Complete Writings, 1:508
97. Xenophon Theodore Barber, "Evenings of Wonders: A History of the Magic Lantern in America," 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1993)
98. Pecor, Magician, 85-86, 104-112
99. Erik Bamouw, The Magician and the Cinema (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 19-34
100. Terry Castle, "Phantasmagoria: Spectral Technology and the Metaphorics of Modern Reverie," Critical Inquiry 15 (autumn 1988): 26-61
101. Altick, Shows, 117, 217-20
102. Robert M. Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 50-52, 199-201
103. For Robertson's own account, see Etienne Gaspard Robertson, Mémoires recreatifs scientifiques et anecdotiques (Paris: n.p., 1831), 1:272-310
104. Like ventriloquism, the phantasmagoria were also incorporated into the natural history of superstition. See Salverte, Occult Sciences, 1:265-92
105. Vox, History and Art, 41-48
106. Isherwood, Farce, 197-98
107. Altick, Shows, 36
108. Good, Book of Nature, 262
109. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. Adam Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 75-78
110. On puppets and witchcraft, see Scott Cutler Shershow, Puppets and "Popular" Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 34-37
111. See also H. J. Moulton, Houdini's History of Magic in Boston, 1792-1915 (Glenwood, Ill.: Meyerbooks, 1983), 1-44
112. Columbian Centinel, 14 July 1804, 3
113. For Rannie's shows within the wider theatrical history of the period, see David Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled: American Theater and Culture, 1800-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 100-101
114. George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), 2:143-44, 209-210, 344
115. Aurora General Advertiser, 14 April 1810, 3
116. [William T. Moncrieff], Memoirs and Anecdotes of Monsieur Alexandre, the Celebrated Dramatic Ventriloquist (London: Lowndes, 1822), 7-9, 12, 27-32
117. New-York Evening Post, 7 March 1810, 3
118. Rannie, European Ventriloquist's Exhibition, 7
119. William Frederick Pinchbeck, Witchcraft, Or the Art of Fortune-Telling Unveiled (Boston: n.p., 1805), 10, 13-15, 47-49, 70
120. On the democratization of the Enlightenment through print, see David Jaffee, "The Village Enlightenment in New England, 1760-1820," William and Mary Quarterly 47 (July 1990): 327-46
121. Barnum, Humbugs, v, 294
122. On Barnum's "operational aesthetic" and uses of deception, see Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 33-89, 211-23
123. Jesse Jasper Moss, "Autobiography," typescript, The Disdples of Christ Historical Society, Nashville. I am indebted to Elizabeth Kronzek for bringing this memoir to my attention
124. Magic, Pretended Miracles, and Remarkable Natural Phenomena (New York: Lane and Scott, 1848), 42-13, 179-81
125. T. L. Nichols, A Biography of the Brothers Davenport (London: Saunders, Otley, 1864), 47-48
126. H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled (Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 1: 105
127. For other primary materials on the battle between magicians and mediums, see James Webb, ed., The Mediums and the Conjurors (New York: Arno, 1976)
128. On the broader movement, see R. Laurence Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977)
129. Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Boston: Beacon, 1989)
130. Everybody a Ventriloquist, 7
131. Charles G. Page, Psychomancy: Spirit-Rappings and Table-Tippings Exposed (New York: Appleton, 1853), 42-43, 58, 61-62, 68
132. Kirbye, Origin, 5-6
133. "Ventriloquism," National Magazine 2 (June 1853): 529
134. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), 2: 4, 10, 142
135. Amariah Brigham, Observations on the Influence of Religion upon the Health and Physical Welfare of Mankind (Boston: Marsh, Capen, and Lyon, 1835)
136. On earlier efforts to medicalize enthusiasm, see especially Heyd, "Be Sober and Reasonable. " On the larger translation of religious idioms into psychological ones, see, for example, Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), esp. 142-58
137. Jean Esquirol, Observations on the Illusions of the Insane, and on the Medico-Legal Question of Their Confinement, trans. William Liddell (London: Renshaw and Rush, 1833), 11-12
138. Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom (New York: Holt, 1889), 2: 132-34, 182
139. Robert E. Blazek, Using Ventriloquism in Christian Education (Littleton, Colo.: Maher, 1976), 5-6, 32
140. See also Bill Boley, The Gospel Ventriloquist: Five Gospel Ventriloquist Routines (Hopkinsville, Ky.: Boley, 1986)
141. William H. Andersen, 111 Ways to Use Ventriloquism in Church Work (Littleton, Colo.: Maher, 1986)
142. Cullen Murphy, '"Hey, Let Me Outta Here!'" Atlantic Monthly 264 (August 1989): 62-71
143. On the larger issue of commodification and Christian amusements, see R. Laurence Moore, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)