Holy Terror

The title of this book highlights the paradox at its heart, namely that the sacred is a Janus-faced power, 'at once life-giving and death-dealing' which the author traces back to the orgies of Dionysus and which also reappears in the Eros and Thanatos of Freud. Eagleton also argues that this ambivalence is found in the modern form of freedom with the martyrdom of the suicide bomber and its obverse, the sacrificial scapegoat. The book's range of erudition is exceptional, both in the history of ideas and the examples drawn from many literary traditions. It sheds new light on the notion of holy terror by seeing in both in terms of the sublime and of evil.