Download or read book Scepticism and belief in English witchcraft drama 1538 1681 written by Eric Pudney and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-14 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2019 Warburg Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities for an outstanding work of literary history This is a study of the representation of witches in early modern English drama, organised around the themes of scepticism and belief. It covers the entire early modern period, including the Restoration, and pays particular attention to three plays in which witchcraft is central: The Witch of Edmonton (1621), The Late Lancashire Witches (1634) and The Lancashire Witches (1681). Always a controversial issue, witchcraft has traditionally been seen in terms of a debate between ‘sceptics’ and ‘believers’. This book argues instead that, while the concepts of scepticism and belief are central to an understanding of early modern witchcraft, they are more fruitfully understood not as static and mutually exclusive positions within the witchcraft debate, but as rhetorical tools used by both sides.
Download or read book Scepticism and Belief in English Witchcraft Drama 1538 1681 written by Eric Pudney and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book situates witchcraft drama within its cultural and intellectual context, highlighting the centrality of scepticism and belief in witchcraft to the genre. It is argued that these categories are most fruitfully understood not as static and mutually exclusive positions within the debate around witchcraft, but as rhetorical tools used within it. In drama, too, scepticism and belief are vital issues. The psychology of the witch character is characterised by a combination of impious scepticism towards God and credulous belief in the tricks of the witch's master, the devil. Plays which present plausible depictions of witches typically use scepticism as a support: the witch's power is subject to important limitations which make it easier to believe. Plays that take witchcraft less seriously present witches with unrestrained power, an excess of belief which ultimately induces scepticism. But scepticism towards witchcraft can become a veneer of rationality concealing other beliefs that pass without sceptical examination. The theatrical representation of witchcraft powerfully demonstrates its uncertain status as a historical and intellectual phenomenon; belief and scepticism in witchcraft drama are always found together, in creative tension with one another.
Download or read book The Witches of Lancashire written by Richard Brome and published by Theatre Arts Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ribald comedy, first performed at The Globe in 1634, everything is going wrong at a wedding, and everyone in attendance is eager to believe a local coven is to blame.
Download or read book Montaigne and Bayle written by Craig B. Brush and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is traditional in the literature on Pierre Bayle to make some refer ene e to iVlontaigne as one of the masters of skepticism in whose tracks he follows, albeit hardly so eloselyas Charron had. Time and again critics feel the need to mention Montaigne and Bayle in the same context, sometimes to contrast their brands of Pyrrhonism, more often to explain similarities in their ideas and methods, which have frequent ly been regarded as important steps in the gradual evolution of un Christian, even anti-Christian, thought. Their names were already associated during Bayle's life, for example, in the mediocre work by Dom Alexis Gaudin, La Distinction et la Nature du Bien et du MaI, Traite ou l'on combat l'erreur des Manicheens, les sentimens de Jvfontaigne & de Charron, & ceux de J. Vfonsieur Bayle. In the nineteen th century, the author of the Dictionnaire historique et critique wa~ generally elassified as a skeptic; and his name was inevi tably linked with the essayist's. In his Port-Royal, Sainte-Beuve pictured Bayle as one of the avowed skeptics in Montaigne's funeral cortege and spoke of both men as "d'autant pIus fourbes qu'ils ne le sont pas toujours." His later works show that he revised his opinion on each somewhat, l but in this he was unusual for his century.
Download or read book Divination on stage written by Folke Gernert and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-02-08 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magicians, necromancers and astrologers are assiduous characters in the European golden age theatre. This book deals with dramatic characters who act as physiognomists or palm readers in the fictional world and analyses the fictionalisation of physiognomic lore as a practice of divination in early modern Romance theatre from Pietro Aretino and Giordano Bruno to Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca and Thomas Corneille.
Download or read book Broken Idols of the English Reformation written by Margaret Aston and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-26 with total page 1994 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why were so many religious images and objects broken and damaged in the course of the Reformation? Margaret Aston's magisterial new book charts the conflicting imperatives of destruction and rebuilding throughout the English Reformation from the desecration of images, rails and screens to bells, organs and stained glass windows. She explores the motivations of those who smashed images of the crucifixion in stained glass windows and who pulled down crosses and defaced symbols of the Trinity. She shows that destruction was part of a methodology of religious revolution designed to change people as well as places and to forge in the long term new generations of new believers. Beyond blanked walls and whited windows were beliefs and minds impregnated by new modes of religious learning. Idol-breaking with its emphasis on the treacheries of images fundamentally transformed not only Anglican ways of worship but also of seeing, hearing and remembering.
Download or read book A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art written by Thomas Wright and published by . This book was released on 1865 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Man as Witch written by R. Schulte and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-06-25 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witch-hunts in Central Europe were by no means focused only on women; one in four alleged witches was male. This study analyzes and describes the witch trials of men in French and German-speaking regions, opening up a little known chapter of early modern times, and revealing the conflicts from which witch-hunts of men evolved.
Download or read book Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe 1400 1800 written by L. Whaley and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women have engaged in healing from the beginning of history, often within the context of the home. This book studies the role, contributions and challenges faced by women healers in France, Spain, Italy and England, including medical practice among women in the Jewish and Muslim communities, from the later Middle Ages to approximately 1800.
Download or read book The Witch written by Ronald Hutton and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets the notorious European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible perspective and traces the major historiographical developments of witchcraft
Download or read book Grimoires written by Owen Davies and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a grimoire? The word has a familiar ring to many people, particularly as a consequence of such popular television dramas as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. But few people are sure exactly what it means. Put simply, grimoires are books of spells that were first recorded in the Ancient Middle East and which have developed and spread across much of the Western Hemisphere and beyond over the ensuing millennia. At their most benign, they contain charms and remedies for natural and supernatural ailments and advice on contacting spirits to help find treasures and protect from evil. But at their most sinister they provide instructions on how to manipulate people for corrupt purposes and, worst of all, to call up and make a pact with the Devil. Both types have proven remarkably resilient and adaptable and retain much of their relevance and fascination to this day. But the grimoire represents much more than just magic. To understand the history of grimoires is to understand the spread of Christianity, the development of early science, the cultural influence of the print revolution, the growth of literacy, the impact of colonialism, and the expansion of western cultures across the oceans. As this book richly demonstrates, the history of grimoires illuminates many of the most important developments in European history over the last two thousand years.
Download or read book A Short History of Freethought written by John Mackinnon Robertson and published by . This book was released on 1899 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A History of Infanticide in Britain c 1600 to the Present written by A. Kilday and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-06-14 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The killing of new-born children is an intensely emotional and emotive subject. The hidden nature of this crime has made it an area incredibly difficult subject area for historians to approach up until now. This work provides the first detailed history of infanticide in mainland Britain from 1600 to the modern era.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of French Thought written by Michael Moriarty and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: French thinkers have revolutionized European thought about knowledge, religion, politics, and society. Delivering a comprehensive history of thought in France from the Middle Ages to the present, this book follows themes and developments of thought across the centuries. It provides readers with studies of both systematic thinkers and those who operate less systematically, through essays or fragments, and places them all in their many contexts. Informed by up-to-date research, these accessible chapters are written by prominent experts in their fields who investigate key concepts in non-technical language. Chapters feature treatments of specific thinkers as individuals including Voltaire, Rousseau, Descartes and Derrida, but also more general movements and schools of thought from humanism to liberalism, via the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Marxism, and feminism. Furthermore, the influence of gender, race, empire and slavery are investigated to offer a broad and fulfilling account of French thought throughout the ages.
Download or read book Hysteria Beyond Freud written by Sander L. Gilman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-03-29 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "She's hysterical." For centuries, the term "hysteria" has been used by physicians and laymen to diagnose and dismiss the extreme emotionality and mysterious physical disorders presumed to bedevil others—especially women. How did this medical concept assume its power? What cultural purposes does it serve? Why do different centuries and different circumstances produce different kinds of hysteria? These are among the questions pursued in this absorbing, erudite reevaluation of the history of hysteria. The widely respected authors draw upon the insights of social and cultural history, rather than Freudian psychoanalysis, to examine the ways in which hysteria has been conceived by doctors and patients, writers and artists, in Europe and North America, from antiquity to the early years of the twentieth century. In so doing, they show that a history of hysteria is a history of how we understand the mind. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.
Download or read book Cultures of Witchcraft in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present written by Jonathan Barry and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-09 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a collection based on the contributions to witchcraft studies of Willem de Blécourt, to whom it is dedicated, and who provides the opening chapter, setting out a methodological and conceptual agenda for the study of cultures of witchcraft (broadly defined) in Europe since the Middle Ages. It includes contributions from historians, anthropologists, literary scholars and folklorists who have collaborated closely with De Blécourt. Essays pick up some or all of the themes and approaches he pioneered, and apply them to cases which range in time and space across all the main regions of Europe since the thirteenth century until the present day. While some draw heavily on texts, others on archival sources, and others on field research, they all share a commitment to reconstructing the meaning and lived experience of witchcraft (and its related phenomena) to Europeans at all levels, respecting the many varieties and ambiguities in such meanings and experiences and resisting attempts to reduce them to master narratives or simple causal models. The chapter 'News from the Invisible World: The Publishing History of Tales of the Supernatural c.1660-1832' is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.
Download or read book Imperial Spain 1469 1716 written by J. H. Elliott and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
