'Diane Purkiss ... insists on taking witches seriously. Her refusal to write witch-believers off as unenlightened has produced some richly intelligent meditations on their -- and our -- world.' - The Observer
'An invigorating and challenging book ... sets many hares running.' - The Times Higher Education Supplement

'Diane Purkiss ... insists on taking witches seriously. Her refusal to write witch-believers off as unenlightened has produced some richly intelligent meditations on their -- and our -- world.' - The Observer
'An invigorating and challenging book ... sets many hares running.' - The Times Higher Education Supplement

In this innovative study, Diane Purkiss illuminates the role of gender in the English Civil War by focusing on ideas of masculinity, rather than on the role of women, which has hitherto received more attention. Historians have tended to emphasise a model of human action in the Civil War based on the idea of the human self as rational animal. Purkiss reveals the irrational ideological forces governing the way seventeenth-century writers understood the state, the monarchy, the battlefield and the epic hero in relation to contested contemporary ideas of masculinity. She analyses the writings of...

Whether on top of the Christmas tree, at the bottom of the garden, or in school plays, today fairiesare consideredsweet, dainty creatures with wands and butterfly wings. But, as Diane Purkiss shows, they have far more wicked origins as troublemakers, child snatchers, seducers, and changelings, representingsociety's deepest fears and desires regarding birth, sex, and death. From these dangerous beings of ancient myths and medieval folklore to the sanitized "wingy thingies" of Shakespeare and the Victorians, and even modern myths of alien abduction, this is arivetingchronicle ofthe need to...

In this innovative study, Diane Purkiss illuminates the role of gender in the English Civil War by focusing on ideas of masculinity, rather than on the role of women, which has hitherto received more attention. Historians have tended to emphasise a model of human action in the Civil War based on the idea of the human self as rational animal. Purkiss reveals the irrational ideological forces governing the way seventeenth-century writers understood the state, the monarchy, the battlefield and the epic hero in relation to contested contemporary ideas of masculinity. She analyses the writings of...

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.