Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture

ISBN-13: 9780333793497 / Angielski / Miękka / 2000 / 241 str.

Stuart Clark

Opis

Different conceptions of the world and of reality have made witchcraft possible in some societies and impossible in others. How did the people of early modern Europe experience it, what was it, and what was its place in their culture? The news essays in this collection illustrate the latest trends in witchcraft research and in cultural history in general. After three decades in which the social analysis of witchcraft accusations has dominated the subject, they turn instead to its significance and meaning as a cultural phenomenon-to the "languages" of witchcraft, rather than its causes. As a result, witchcraft seems less startling than it once was, yet more revealing of the world in which it occurred.

Spis treści

Preface.- Notes of Contributors.- Introduction; S. ClarkPART 1: HISTORY AND STORY IN WITCHCRAFT TRIALS.- Texts of Authority: Witchcraft Accusations and the Demonstration of Truth in Early Modern England; P. Rushton.- Understanding Witchcraft; M. Gibson.- Witches and Witnesses in Old and New England; M. Gaskill.- Sounds of Silence: Fairies and Incest in Scottish Witchcraft Stories; D. Purkiss.- PART 2: CONTEXTS OF WITCHCRAFT.- Towards a Politics of Witchcraft in Early Modern England; P. Elmer.- The Religion of Reginald Scot; D. Wootton.- Hell Upon Earth or the Language of the Playhouse; J. Barry.- PART 3: HOW CONTEMPORARIES READ WITCHCRAFT.- Circling the Devil: Witch-doctors and Magic Healers in Early Modern Lorraine; R. Briggs.- Witchcraft as Metaphor: Infanticide and its Translations in Aragon in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; M. Tausiet.- Witchcraft and Forensic Medicine in Seventeenth-Century Germany; T. Robisheaux.- Reasoning with Unreason: Visions, Witchcraft and Madness in Early Modern England; K. Hodgkin.- Index.

O autorze

STUART CLARK is Professor of History at the University of Wales, Swansea.