Demon-Lovers and Their Victims in British Fiction

Book excerpt: The hero of the story is a demonic lover—dark, handsome, mysterious, and dangerously seductive. The heroine—beautiful, and innocent—willingly becomes his victim and is destroyed by him. This story of demon-lover and victim, always charged with passion, has been told over and over, from Greek mythology through contemporary fiction and films. Demon-Lovers and Their Victims in British Fiction is the first historical and structural exploration of the demon-lover motif, with emphasis on major works of British fiction from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries; it will interest those concerned with gender role conflicts in literature and with the mutual influence of oral and written texts of folklore and formal literature.