Lisa Silke Maier-Raab

• C6: Transformations of Demonic Illusion – Dream, Hallucination, Phantasmagoria

After 1630, the persecution of witches and sorcerers subsided. Thereafter, demonological knowledge, especially the concept of demonic illusion, does not simply disappear, but is transformed in a lengthy process and shifted to other areas of knowledge and to social and aesthetic practices. The German studies project focuses on the inquiry into the externalisation of demonic illusion in the apparatus. The project explores the relationship between optical media – in particular the Laterna magica – and literature between the Baroque and the Age of Enlightenment. It introduces a new media and cultural-historical emphasis that ties in with the research field of intermediality – and above all 'Précinéma' – and expands it to incorporate both the 'long early Modern period' as well as  literary texts. This media-historical approach is deepened by the praxeological model of the SFB in two ways: on the one hand through the instrument of the aesthetic figure of reflection (Laterna magica), and on the other hand through the integration of hetero-discursive references to media history, the history of optics, the Age of Enlightenment and Rationalism.