Guardian Angel - Literary Usage

Literary Usage

Guardian angels were often considered to be matched by a personal demon who countered the angel's efforts, especially in popular medieval drama such as morality plays like the 15th century The Castle of Perseverance. In Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, of about 1592, Faustus has a "Good Angel" and "Bad Angel" who offer competing advice (Act 2, scene 1, etc.). These useful dramatic characters have enjoyed continued popularity in popular media, as the shoulder angel, often matched by a personal demon, of modern films and cartoons.

Guardian angels appear in literary works of the medieval and Renaissance periods. Later the Anglican English physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82), stated his belief in Religio Medici (part 1, paragraph 33),

Therefore for Spirits I am so farre from denying their existence, that I could easily believe, that not only whole Countries, but particular persons have their Tutelary, and Guardian Angels: It is not a new opinion of the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato; there is no heresay in it, and if not manifestly defined in Scripiture, yet is it an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a man's life, and would serve as an Hypothesis to salve many doubts, whereof common philosophy affordeth no solution.

By the 19th century, the guardian angel was no longer viewed in Anglophone lands as an intercessory figure, but rather as a force protecting the believer from performing sin. A parody apperars in Lord Byron's Don Juan,

"Oh! she was perfect past all parallel—

Of any modern female saint's comparison;

So far above the cunning powers of hell,

Her guardian angel had given up his garrison" (Canto I, xvii).

While Byron's usage of the guardian angel is influenced by Alexander Pope's "sylph", it seems that the popular image of the angel was as a spiritual superego.