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Stories of violence â€” such as the account in Genesis of Cainâ€™s jealousy and murder of Abel â€” have been with us since the time of the earliest recorded texts. Undeniably, the scourge of violence fascinates, confounds, and saddens. What are its uses in literature â€” its appeal, forms, and consequences? Anchored by Alice Kaplanâ€™s substantial contribution, the thirteen articles in this volume cover diverse epochs, lands, and motives. One scholar ponders whether accounts of Huguenot martyrdom in the sixteenth-century might suggest more pride than piety. Another assesses the real versus the true with respect to a rape scene in The Heptameron. Female violence in fairy tales by Madame dâ€™Aulnoy points to gender politics and the fragility of female solidarity, while another article examines similar issues in the context of Ananda Deviâ€™s works in present-day Mauritius. Other studies address the question of sadism in Flaubert, the unstable point of view of Emmanuel CarrÃ¨reâ€™s Lâ€™Adversaire, the ambivalence toward violence in Chamoiseauâ€™s Texaco, the notions of â€œterrorâ€ and â€œtabula rasaâ€ in the writings of Blanchot, the undoing of traditions of narrative continuity and authority in the 1998 film, Ã€ vendre, and consequences of the power differential in a repressive Haiti as depicted in the film Vers le Sud (2005). Paradoxes emerge in several studies of works where victims may become perpetrators, or vice versa.