The Superstitious Mind: French Peasants and the Supernatural in the Nineteenth Century

This intriguing book examines popular religion, traditional medicine, witchcraft, apparitions, demonology, and magic in nineteenth-century rural France. Devlin demonstrates that many of the impulses and mental processes now considered superstitious constituted a wholly reasonable response to the pressures of a harsh and impoverished life. Far from the product of a primitive mentality, many of these beliefs have survived in modern culture and can even illuminate the nature of modern mass politics.