The Devil in Love (novel)

The Devil in Love (French: Le Diable amoureux, 1772) is an occult romance by Jacques Cazotte which tells of a demon, or devil, who falls in love with a young Spanish nobleman[1] named Don Alvaro, an amateur human dabbler, and attempts, in the guise of a young woman, to win his affections.

The Devil in Love
Title page of Jacques Cazotte's The Devil in Love, 1772
AuthorJacques Cazotte
Original titleLe Diable amoureux
TranslatorJudith Landry
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Genrenovel
Published1772 (French)
1793 (English)
Author of The Devil in Love, Jacques Cazotte

French critic P.G. Castex has described The Devil In Love as "the very initiator of the modern fantasy story".[2]

Canadian critic Carlo Testa has described The Devil In Love (in review of Stephen Sartarelli's 1993 translation) as a "terminus a quo" in the history of the demonic subgenre".[3]

The Le Diable amoureux started a literary style known as fantastique, where surreal events intrude on reality and the reader is left guessing whether the events actually occurred or were merely the product of the character's imagination.

Plot

Don Alvaro, a young but wise man, invokes Satan. Upon seeing the young Alvaro, Satan falls in love with him and assumes the appearance of a young woman, Biondetta. He follows Alvaro as his page. In the journey that unfolds, Satan, disguised as a woman, tries to seduce Alvaro who rejects his advances lest he lose his precious virginity. He is unwilling to compromise his honor by sleeping with a woman before they are married and he will first need his mother’s approval of the union.[4]

Adaptations

References

  1. "Vintage Pop Fictions: The Devil in Love, by Jacques Cazotte". vintagepopfictions.blogspot.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-01-22.
  2. Castex quoted in Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book:an illustrated history from Dracula to Tolkien. Collier Books, 1978, (p. 137). ISBN 0-02-053560-0
  3. Testa, Carlo (Spring–Summer 1994). "Reviewed Work: The Devil in Love by Jacques Cazotte, Stephen Sartarelli". Nineteenth-Century French Studies. JSTOR 23537155.
  4. "Vintage Pop Fictions: The Devil in Love, by Jacques Cazotte". vintagepopfictions.blogspot.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-01-22.


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