The witch in history : early modern and twentieth-century representations / Diane Purkiss.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Purkiss, Diane, 1961-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Witchcraft--History.

Witchcraft.

Witchcraft in literature--History.

Witchcraft in literature.

Witchcraft in art--History.

Witchcraft in art.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 296p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London, ; New York : Routledge, 1996.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Looking at texts from colonial narratives to court masques, trial records to folktales, and Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, this book shows how the witch acts as a carrier for fears, desires and fantasies both now and in the early modern period.

'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

Contents:

Part 1. The Histories of Witchcraft I. Popular Herstories 1. A Holocaust of One's Own: The Myth of the Burning Times 2. At Play in the Fields of the Past: Modern Witches 3. The Witch in the hands of Historians: a Tale of Prejudice and Fear Part 2. Early Modern Witches I. Women's Stories of Witchcraft 4. The House, the Body, the Child 5. No limit: the body of the witch 6. Agency: Witches' confessions and self-representation II. Witches on Stage 7. Elizabethan stagings: the witch, the queen, class 8. James I and the staging of witchcraft: plays of the witch-vogue: Macbeth, the Masque of Queens, The Witch 9. Testimony and Truth: `Real' witches in The Witch of Edmonton, The Late Lancashire Witches 10. The Witch on the margins of "race": Sycorax and others.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-134-88238-6

0-203-35972-0

1-134-88239-4

1-280-02087-3

0-203-37648-X

9780203359723

OCLC:

54494773