Charms, charmers and charming : international research on verbal magic / edited by Jonathan Roper.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Roper, Jonathan, 1969-

Series:

Palgrave historical studies in witchcraft and magic

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Charms.

Incantations.

Physical Description:

xxvii, 294 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Summary:

Charms, Charmers and Charming addresses popular verbal magic. Its nineteen chapters focus on charms (the words), charmers (the people) and charming (the activity) in a broad range of times and places, from early modern Finland to contemporary Malaysia, and from late medieval England to colonial Madagascar.

A selection of experts from America, Asia and Europe discuss rat charms, snake charms, how impossibility and inevitability are expressed in charms, why charming has revived following the Balkan wars, the literary use of charms by Shakespeare and by Malagasy story-tellers, the ramifications of charms in later times and places, and how charms are (amongst other things) a means of coping. Taken together, the book offers some of the best and most diverse scholarship produced in the current revival in the study of charms.

Contents:

Introduction: Unity and Diversity in Charms Studies / Jonathan Roper xiv

Charms studies today xvii

Part I Topics and Issues in Charms Studies 1

1 The Charmer's Body and Behaviour as a Window Onto Early Modern Selfhood / Laura Stark 3

Tietaja: specialist in magical protection 5

Reputations for magical harm 10

Making the self inviolable 12

2 'If Not, Shall Employ "Rough on Rats"': Identifying the Common Elements of Rat Charms / Paul Cowdell 17

3 Miracles and Impossibilities in Magic Folk Poetry / Eva Pocs 27

Natural impossibilities 29

The stone world of the satan 35

Natural impossibility-divine miracle 38

Cosmic impossibilities-cosmic miracles 41

4 Swedish Snakebite Charms from a Gender Perspective / Ritwa Herjulfsdotter 54

The Virgin Mary walked in the grass 55

The Virgin Mary walked on the road 56

The Virgin Mary gave me a cloth 56

Snake on a tuft of grass 57

The transmission of charms 57

Who read the snake charms professionally? Who used them in the household? 58

5 Charms as a Means of Coping / Ulrika Wolf-Knuts 62

6 On Systematizing the Narrative Elements of Slavic Charms / Vladimir Klyaus 71

Cases when the same personages carry out the opposite actions 80

Cases when opposed personages perform diametrically opposed actions 82

7 Conformity and Originality in Middle English Charms / T.M. Smallwood 87

8 The Nightmare Charm in King Lear / Jacqueline Simpson 100

9 Expressions of Impossibility and Inevitability in Mari Charms / Natalia Glukhova, Vladimir Glukhov 108

Part II National Traditions 119

10 Russian Love Charms in a Comparative Light / Andrei Toporkov 121

Problems of the comparative study of Russian charms 121

Some characteristics of the Russian charm tradition 123

Issues in the study of love charms 125

Evolution of the formula 'let her neither eat nor drink' 127

The formula in European charms (from the Renaissance until the modern era) 129

Parallels between Greek and Russian charms 132

The semantics of the formula 'let her not eat or drink' 134

Interpreting similarity 135

Some further hypotheses 137

11 Slovenian Charms Between South Slavic and Central European Tradition / Monika Kropej 145

Verbal charms in the village of Windish Bleiberg/Slovenji Plajberg 146

Classification of the Slovenian healing- and weather charms 150

Slovenian Charms within Central and Southeast Europe 156

Cosmological elements in Slovenian charms 158

12 Finnish Snake Charms / Henni Ilomaki 163

The snake as a magical character 163

Types of Finnish snake-charms 165

On the background of Finnish charms 167

Contradictory ideas 169

The bricolage of worldview 171

13 Estonian Narrative Charms in European Context / Jonathan Roper 174

The predominance of a limited number of types 177

Role of innovative composers and prolific translators in 'unbalancing' a corpus 181

14 Lithuanian and Latvian Charms: Searching for Parallels / Daiva Vaitkeviciene 186

Invocations and comparison charms 187

Dialogues 193

Enumeration charms 195

Malicious wishes 196

Narrative charms 199

15 The Corpus of Charms in the Middle English Leechcraft Remedy Books / Lea Olsan 214

The Leechcraft remedy book 215

The Leechcraft charms 216

Charm texts 217

Tables of distribution 225

The Leechcraft corpus 225

Manuscripts containing Leechcraft remedies 231

16 The Charms of Biljana, a Bajalica (Conjuror) in Budisava, Serbia / Maria Vivod 238

17 Verbal Charms in Malagasy Folktales / Lee Haring 246

18 The Structure and Use of Charms in Georgia, The Caucasus / Meri Tsiklauri, David Hunt 260

The etymology of the Georgian word for charm 261

Classification of charms according their aims and meaning 261

Structure of verbal charms 262

Actions used in the process of telling charms 264

Poetic language of the Georgian charms 265

19 Manteras: An Overview of a Malay Archipelagoes' Charming Tradition / Low Kok On 273.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

023055184X

9780230551848

OCLC:

154788750

Online:

Publisher description