Abstract

This article explores Georges Bataille's attempts to locate Gilles de Rais —military figurehead, national hero, serial child-killer, archetype of Bluebeard—in a cultural, historical and political imaginary, and in a religious inscape. Bataille does this in his essay 'The Tragedy of Gilles de Rais', where de Rais finds his place as a remnant of the collapsing world of the feudal seigneur, a world he had outlived, with its military reforms and complex ecclesiastical politics.