Languages of witchcraft : narrative, ideology, and meaning in early modern culture / edited by Stuart Clark.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Clark, Stuart.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Witchcraft--Europe--History--16th century--Congresses.

Witchcraft.

Witchcraft--Europe--History--17th century--Congresses.

Witchcraft--Europe--History--18th century--Congresses.

History.

Europe.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Physical Description:

xiii, 241 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2001.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Part 1 History and Story in Witchcraft Trials 19

1 Texts of Authority: Witchcraft Accusations and the Demonstration of Truth in Early Modern England / Peter Rushton 21

2 Understanding Witchcraft? Accusers' Stories in Print in Early Modern England / Marion Gibson 41

3 Witches and Witnesses in Old and New England / Malcolm Gaskill 55

4 Sounds of Silence: Fairies and Incest in Scottish Witchcraft Stories / Diane Purkiss 81

Part 2 Contexts of Witchcraft 99

5 Towards a Politics of Witchcraft in Early Modern England / Peter Elmer 101

6 Reginald Scot/ Abraham Fleming/ The Family of Love / David Wootton 119

7 Hell upon Earth or the Language of the Playhouse / Jonathan Barry 139

Part 3 How Contemporaries Read Witchcraft 159

8 Circling the Devil: Witch-Doctors and Magical Healers in Early Modern Lorraine / Robin Briggs 161

9 Witchcraft as Metaphor: Infanticide and its Translations in Aragon in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries / Maria Tausiet 179

10 Witchcraft and Forensic Medicine in Seventeenth-Century Germany / Thomas Robisheaux 197

11 Reasoning with Unreason: Visions, Witchcraft, and Madness in Early Modern England / Katharine Hodgkin 217.

Notes:

Papers from a conference held in Sept. 1998 by the History Department of the University of Wales, Swansea.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

033379348X

0333793498

OCLC:

44039429