The phrase 'motiveless malignity' was used by S. T. Coleridge to describe which diabolic villain of literature?
"and personal motives"". Draper argues that Iago ""seized occasions rather than made them"". According to his theory, Iago ""is the first cause, but events, once under way, pass out of his control"". Following this logic, Draper concludes that Iago ""is neither as clever nor as wicked as some would think; and the problem of his character largely resolves itself into the question: was he justified in embarking upon the initial stages of his revenge?” Iago has been described as a ""motiveless malignity"" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This reading would seem to suggest that Iago, much like Don John in ""Much"
"was the avenging daemon or ""alastor"" of Coleridge's life, his dark or fallen angel, his experiential acquaintance with Milton's Satan. Opium was for him what wandering and moral tale-telling became for the Mariner – the personal shape of repetition compulsion. The lust for paradise in 'Kubla Khan,' Geraldine's lust for Christabel – these are manifestations of Coleridge's revisionary daemonization of Milton, these are Coleridge's countersublime. Poetic genius, the genial spirit itself, Coleridge must see as daemonic when it is his own rather than when it is Milton's."" Kubla Khan ""Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment"" is"
"pupils. Rowling described Voldemort as ""the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years"". She elaborated that he is a ""raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering"", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—just for pleasure. He has no conscience, feels no remorse, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself. He feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to"
"mentally deficient, but people with cringe-worthy social traits are also included. The reader becomes piqued by the grotesque's positive side, and continues reading to see if the character can conquer their darker side. In Shakespeare's ""The Tempest"", the figure of Caliban has inspired more nuanced reactions than simple scorn and disgust. Also, in J. R. R. Tolkien's ""The Lord of the Rings"", the character of Gollum may be considered to have both disgusting and empathetic qualities, which fit him into the grotesque template. Victor Hugo's ""Hunchback of Notre Dame"" is one of the most celebrated grotesques in literature. Dr. Frankenstein's"
"a reference to the Sockburn Worm slain by Sir John Conyers (and a possible source for Lewis Carroll's ""Jabberwocky""). The worm was supposedly buried under the rock in the nearby pasture; this was the 'greystone' of Coleridge's first draft, later transformed into a 'mount'. The poem was a direct inspiration for John Keats' famous poem ""La Belle Dame Sans Merci"". Coleridge's early intellectual debts, besides German idealists like Kant and critics like Lessing, were first to William Godwin's ""Political Justice"", especially during his Pantisocratic period, and to David Hartley's ""Observations on Man"", which is the source of the psychology which"
"Toni Morrison's ""Beloved"" topped the list. Novelist David Foster Wallace named ""Blood Meridian"" one of the five most underappreciated American novels since 1960 and described it as ""[p]robably the most horrifying book of this century, at least [in] fiction."" Academics and critics have variously suggested that ""Blood Meridian"" is nihilistic or strongly moral; a satire of the western genre, a savage indictment of Manifest Destiny. Harold Bloom called it ""the ultimate western;"" J. Douglas Canfield described it as ""a grotesque ""Bildungsroman"" in which we are denied access to the protagonist's consciousness almost entirely."" Comparisons have been made to the work"
"Francis Dolarhyde Francis Dolarhyde is a fictional character and a primary antagonist of Thomas Harris' 1981 novel ""Red Dragon"". Dolarhyde is a serial killer who murders entire families by shooting them in their beds. He is nicknamed ""The Tooth Fairy"" due to the nocturnal nature of his crimes, his tendency to bite his victims' bodies, the uncommon size and sharpness of his teeth and other apparent oral fixations. He kills at the behest of an alternate personality; he refers to his other self as ""The Great Red Dragon"" after William Blake's painting ""The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed"
"You wait for the evil genius to turn up—but he never does"", while David Sexton in the ""London Evening Standard"" thinks the character ""lacks charisma"", and David Connett in the ""Sunday Express"" considers him ""a colourless character in comparison with factual and fictional counterparts"". The journalist Geoffrey Wansell in the ""Daily Mail"" disagreed and Breed, along with a second villain, millionaire Hulbert Linck, were as strong as some of Fleming's villains; Steinhauer also thought that the novel's villains were realistic, ""motivated by simple greed yet clever enough to be legitimately dangerous"". There are two main female characters in ""Solo""—a horror"
"and desire."" Faulks himself considered that: ""My female lead—the 'Bond girl'—has a little more depth than Fleming's women, but not at the expense of glamour"", although Christopher Hitchens complained that ""there is almost no sex until the very last pages."" The primary antagonist of the novel is Dr Julius Gorner, a chemist with ""main de singe"", monkey's paw: a left hand resembling that of a monkey, covered with hair and without an opposed thumb. Writer Ian Thomson sees Gorner as being ""a villain to rival the half-Chinese Dr Julius No"", describing him as ""a megalomaniac in the cruel lineage of"
"Mister Negative Mister Negative (Martin Li) is a fictional character, a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, usually as an enemy of Spider-Man, the Punisher and Cloak and Dagger. Created by Dan Slott and Phil Jimenez, Mister Negative first appeared in a cameo in the history ""Swing Shift"" of ""Free Comic Book Day (Spider-Man)"", an issue set after the events of the """" storyline. Mister Negative's first full appearance came in ""The Amazing Spider-Man"" #546 (January 2008); the start of the """" storyline. Martin Li is an illegal Chinese immigrant from Fujian province who attempted to"
"than accidental, considering that in his speech in ""Out of the Silent Planet"" he presents himself very much as the proponent of ""Western Civilization"" in its most expansionist and aggressive mode. (The names of the main villains in That Hideous Strength, ""Wither"" and ""Frost"", are clearly meant to reflect their characters.) Professor Weston can also stand for the scientific elitism that despises all other types of knowledge. Professor Weston Professor Weston (full name Edward Rolles Weston) is arguably one of C. S. Lewis's greatest satanic characters. He first appears in Lewis’s ""Out of the Silent Planet"", the first novel in"
"have a religious basis, calling them ""essentially Christian books"" and saying that Christianity stopped him from ""promoting the cause of evil"" by writing ""mindless savagery"" in the vein of George G. Gilman's ""Edge"" westerns. Often didactic, his work typically features a charismatic warrior tortured by loss and self-doubt, who bands together with a group of unlikely companions in order to defeat a dark enemy, usually aided by mystical forces. While all his novels are violent, successes are often Pyrrhic and the villains complex. Gemmell credited his time as a journalist for providing him with his pacey, succinct style, though critics"
"in this world eternal powers as aggressiveness and the strife for power win. There is no place for such concepts as freedom, responsibility, idealism: in the jungle of human existence a sacrifice for a good cause is meaningless. Specific elements of this pessimistic worldview are kindred to Marquis de Sade, Heinrich von Kleist, Arthur Schopenhauer, Sigmund Freud, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Ludwig Wittgenstein. There does not exist any benefit of hindsight, and the past is just as unknowable as is the present, if only because the past is never fully accessible. Osewoudt, the protagonist of ""The Darkroom of Damocles"", is unable"
"Lord Voldemort Lord Voldemort (, in the films; born Tom Marvolo Riddle) is a fictional character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of ""Harry Potter"" novels. Voldemort first appeared in ""Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"", which was released in 1997. Voldemort appears either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series, except the third, ""Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"", where he is only mentioned. Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has ""the power to vanquish the Dark Lord"". Nearly every witch"
"most profoundly - and believed to be a matter of life and death - would be anathema to his readers. Not only would the vast majority of his readership find his visionary slogan ridiculous - ""We recognize but one race - the HUMAN RACE"" - they would find it grossly evil...[so Gibbons made every one of the novel's favourable characters into thorough-going bigots..."" while, Gardner points out, all the evil done by the novel's main antagonist Karakhan of Kazan ""has been done before by white against nonwhites... even the novel's sympathetic characters can at least glimpse the reason"" for his"
"Quilp Daniel Quilp is one of the main antagonists in the novel ""The Old Curiosity Shop"" by Charles Dickens, written in 1840. Quilp is a vicious, ill-tempered and grotesque dwarf and is the villain of the story. Quilp is as near that Dickens ever came to creating a monster. Actors who have portrayed him include Hay Petrie, Anthony Newley, Patrick Troughton and Toby Jones. Dickens describes Quilp as ""so low in stature as to be quite a dwarf, though his head and face were large enough for a giant. His black eyes were restless, sly and cunning, his mouth and"
"is portrayed as a corporeal, stereotypical Satanic being requiring human sacrifices from his followers. The religion of the Calormenes seems more likely to have been based on early Canaanite and Carthaginian religion, which also required human sacrifice, and was portrayed as the ultimate in diabolism in G. K. Chesterton's ""The Everlasting Man"", a book which Lewis admired. The unimaginative and business-minded nature of the Calormenes may also have been based on Chesterton's portrayal of Carthage. In the purely literary sense, however, the depiction of Calormene religion may owe something to the bogey image of Islam found in medieval romances: see"
"Freddy Lounds Freddy Lounds (or Fredricka ""Freddie"" Lounds) is a fictional character in the Hannibal Lecter series, created by author Thomas Harris. Lounds first appears in the 1981 novel ""Red Dragon"" as a foil to protagonist Will Graham. Lounds is ultimately murdered by the novel's primary antagonist, serial killer Francis Dolarhyde. Harris describes Lounds as ""lumpy and ugly and small"", with ""buck teeth"", and whose ""rat eyes had the sheen of spit on asphalt"". In terms of personality, Harris further describes Lounds as having ""the longing need to be noticed that is often miscalled ego"", sharpened by frustrated ambition: Resentful"
"Book Villain of All Time. The character made his film debut in the 2016 film ""Doctor Strange"", performed through motion capture by Benedict Cumberbatch and voiced by Cumberbatch and an unidentified British actor. Dormammu first appeared in ""Strange Tales"" #126–127 (November – December 1964), but had been mentioned previously in dialog, along with his realm the ""Dark Dimension"". Writer Mike Conroy said: After being established as the ruler of an alternate dimension (later described as the god-tyrant of its denizens), Dormammu became a perennial foe of Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange, who until this time had dealt almost exclusively with off-beat"
"and Karlton Douglas speculate that a more likely derivation of ""Melungeon"", related to the English culture of the colonies, may have been from the now obsolete English word ""malengin"" (also spelled ""mal engin"") meaning ""guile"", ""deceit"", or ""ill intent."" It was used by Edmund Spenser as the name of a trickster figure in his epic poem, ""The Faerie Queene"" (1590–1596), popular in Elizabethan England. The phrase, ""harbored them Melungins,"" would be equivalent to ""harbored someone of ill will"", or could mean ""harbored evil people"", without reference to any ethnicity. A different explanation traces the word to ""malungu"" (or ""malungo""), a"
"seek to disrupt the comfort and lives of people. In fantasy novels, Dark Lords have become something of a cliché stemming from the success of J. R. R. Tolkien's ""The Lord of the Rings"", in which the main antagonist, Sauron, is often referred to as the ""Dark Lord"". On occasion, the people of Gondor in Middle-earth refer to Sauron as ""The Enemy"" or ""The Nameless Enemy"" despite knowing his real name; arguably starting the practice of avoiding pronouncing a Dark Lord's actual name. In fact the name Sauron, meaning the Abhorred, itself is already a mockery of his actual name"
"the edge of being out of control, and has to be reined in"". The primary antagonist of the novel is Kobus Breed, a mercenary with a disfigured face and a permanently weeping eye who had previously served with the Rhodesian Light Infantry in Matabeleland; Olen Steinhauer, writing in ""The New York Times"" thinks the scarred villain to be ""an obligatory nod toward the requirements of the Bond formula"". Some writers are unimpressed with Breed; Robert Crampton of ""The Sunday Times"" thinks that the character ""feels more like a henchman than a proper power-crazed villain. He has menace, but no ambition."
"on their conflict, at least for now. Sabretooth (comics) Sabretooth (Victor Creed) is a fictional character, a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, most commonly in association with the X-Men, in particular as an enemy of Wolverine. Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist/co-writer John Byrne, the character first appeared in ""Iron Fist"" #14 (August 1977). Sabretooth was originally portrayed as a non-powered serial killer but was later written as a mutant possessing bestial superhuman abilities, most notably a rapid healing factor, razor-sharp fangs and claws, and superhuman senses. He is a vicious assassin, responsible for"
"Deathstroke Deathstroke (Slade Joseph Wilson) is a fictional supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. He is a mercenary and assassin who serves as the archenemy of the Teen Titans, specifically Dick Grayson. Over the years, writers have developed him as an adversary of other superheroes in the DC Universe as well, such as Batman and Green Arrow. Deathstroke has been ranked as the Greatest Villain of All Time by ""Wizard"" magazine, and as the 32nd Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time by IGN. The character has been substantially adapted from the comics into multiple forms"
"for not being just another story about banality of evil: ""it is a magnificently artificial project in character construction, a highly literary and provocative attempt to create a character various enough to match the many discontinuous realities of the apocalyptic Nazi world-view. The result is a sprawling, daring, loose-ended monster of a book, one that justifies its towering subject matter by its persistent and troubling refusal to offer easy answers and to make satisfying sense."" Writing for ""The Guardian"", British author James Lasdun criticized the novel for ""some large flaws"" such as its main character, ""a ghoul belonging more to"
"The chief villain of the series is Ming the Merciless, archetype of the Evil Overlord. Cruel, cold, arrogant, avaricious, ruthless, and Machiavellian, Ming is the epitome of the tyrant. Yet he is brilliant, referred to by some as the greatest scientist in the universe, and politically and diplomatically capable. He is skilled in personal combat, but feels no compulsion to engage in it when misdirection will work as well. His personal race is unclear, his ears are pointed, his teeth seem fanged, his frame oddly thin yet very strong...and he claims to be immortal, with some supporting evidence. He also"
"performance. In 2003, Hannibal Lecter (as portrayed by Hopkins) was chosen by the American Film Institute as the greatest villain in American cinema. In June 2010, ""Entertainment Weekly"" named him one of the ""100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years"". ""Red Dragon"" firmly states that Lecter does not fit any known psychological profile. In ""The Silence of the Lambs"", Lecter's keeper, Dr. Frederick Chilton, claims that Lecter is a ""pure sociopath"" (""pure psychopath"" in the film adaptation). In the novel ""Red Dragon"", protagonist Will Graham says that Lecter has no conscience and tortured animals as a child, but does"
"the Crimson King, is a similarly disembodied evil presence whose icon is also an eye. In the Marvel Comics Universe, the supervillain Sauron, an enemy of the X-Men, names himself after the Tolkien character. In the comic series ""Fables"", by Bill Willingham, one character is called ""The Adversary"", an ambiguous figure of immense evil and power believed to be responsible for much of the misfortune in the Fables' overall history. Willingham has stated ""The Adversary"", in name and in character, was inspired by Sauron. Sauron Sauron is the title character and main antagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien's ""The Lord"
"The Imp of the Perverse The Imp of the Perverse is a metaphor for the urge to do exactly the wrong thing in a given situation for the sole reason that it is possible for wrong to be done. The impulse is compared to an imp (a small demon) which leads an otherwise decent person into mischief. The phrase has a long history in literature, and was popularized (and perhaps coined) by Edgar Allan Poe in his short story, ""The Imp of the Perverse"". Poe explores this impulse through several of his fictional characters, the narrators in ""The Black Cat"""
"the shift from epic to ironic narratives. Huckleberry Finn (1884) has been called ""the first antihero in the American nursery"". The antihero became prominent in early 20th century existentialist works such as Franz Kafka's ""The Metamorphosis"" (1915), Jean-Paul Sartre's ""La Nausée"" (1938) (), and Albert Camus' ""L'Étranger"" (1942) (). The protagonist in these works is an indecisive central character who drifts through his life and is marked by ennui, angst, and alienation. The antihero entered American literature in the 1950s and up to the mid-1960s was portrayed as an alienated figure, unable to communicate. The American antihero of the 1950s"
"not to write them — in part because he found Scudder so unpleasant. Heinlein's novel ""Stranger in a Strange Land"" features two cults: the ""Dionysian Church of the New Revelation, Fosterite"", and the protagonist Valentine Michael Smith's own ""Church of All Worlds"". Heinlein treats of the motives and methods of religious leaders in some detail. Fictional cults also feature in science fantasy and in horror novels. In ""That Hideous Strength"", C.S. Lewis describes the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, or ""NICE"", a quasi-governmental front concealing a kind of doomsday cult that worships a disembodied head kept alive by scientific means."
"e.g. ""tender churl"", ""gentle thief"". Other examples from English-language literature include: ""hateful good"" (Chaucer, translating ""odibile bonum"") ""proud humility"" (Spenser), ""darkness visible"" (Milton), ""beggarly riches"" (John Donne), ""damn with faint praise"" (Pope), ""expressive silence"" (Thomson, echoing Cicero's ), ""melancholy merriment"" (Byron), ""faith unfaithful"", ""falsely true"" (Tennyson), ""conventionally unconventional"", ""tortuous spontaneity"" (Henry James) ""delighted sorrow"", ""loyal treachery"", ""scalding coolness"" (Hemingway). In literary contexts, the author does not usually signal the use of an oxymoron, but in rhetorical usage, it has become common practice to advertise the use of an oxymoron explicitly to clarify the argument, as in: In this example, ""Epicurean"
"and is accidentally bitten off by the repeated action of it moving against his growing incisor teeth. In the first-season episode ""The Courier (No. 85)"" of the TV series ""The Blacklist"" a criminal transporter (played by Robert Knepper) is diagnosed with congenital anhidrosis. In the Japanese visual novel ""Dramatical Murder"", the character Noiz suffers from CIPA and participates in the fighting simulation called Rhyme in order to feel the illusion of pain. Ronald Niedermann is an antagonistic character in Stieg Larsson novel ""The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest"", a criminal that born with a ""rare condition"" that makes him"