Speak of the Devil (book)

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Speak of the Devil: tales of satanic abuse in contemporary England
File:Speak of the devil.gif
Author Jean Sybil La Fontaine
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Subject Satanic ritual abuse
Genre Non-fiction
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Publication date
1998
Pages 224
ISBN 0-521-62934-9
OCLC 36548968
364.15/554/0941 21
LC Class HV6626.54.G7 L3 1998

Speak of the Devil: tales of satanic abuse in contemporary England is a scholarly book by J. S. La Fontaine published in 1998 that discusses her investigation of allegations of satanic ritual abuse made in the United Kingdom. The book documents a detailed investigation of the accounts of children during a wave of allegations of satanic ritual abuse, as well as the processes within the social work profession that supported the allegations despite a lack of evidence.[1]

Reception

Academic reviews

The book was reviewed by Joel Best,[2] T. M. Luhrmann[3] James Beckford[4] and I. K. Wier.[5] Robin Woffitt of the University of Surrey praised the book for clearly describing the origins of the satanic ritual abuse moral panic in the United Kingdom.[1]

Subsequent academic reception

The English archaeologist Timothy Taylor critically discussed Fontaine's work in his book The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death (2002). He compared the work to the anthropologist William Arens' 1979 book The Man-Eating Myth, which he described as a "hollow certainty of viscerally insulated inexperience". Asserting that Arens' uses a flawed methodology that has echoes of Speak of the Devil, Taylor himself suggests that multiple claims of the Satanic ritual abuse have been incorrectly dismissed for being considered "improbable".[6]

Publication details

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References

Footnotes

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  6. Taylor 2002. pp. 280–283.

Bibliography