Download or read book Crafting the Witch written by Heidi Breuer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. In the earlier texts, magic is predominantly a masculine pursuit, garnering its user prestige and power, but in the later texts, magic becomes a primarily feminine activity, one that marks its user as wicked and heretical. This project explores both the literary and the social motivations for this transformation, seeking an answer to the question, 'why did the witch become wicked?' Heidi Breuer traverses both the medieval and early modern periods and considers the way in which the representation of literary witches interacted with the culture at large, ultimately arguing that a series of economic crises in the fourteenth century created a labour shortage met by women. As women moved into the previously male-dominated economy, literary backlash came in the form of the witch, and social backlash followed soon after in the form of Renaissance witch-hunting. The witch figure serves a similar function in modern American culture because late-industrial capitalism challenges gender conventions in similar ways as the economic crises of the medieval period.
Download or read book Magic and Masculinity written by Frances Timbers and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-02-21 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early modern England, the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic - the attempted communication with angels and demons - both reinforced and subverted existing concepts of gender. The majority of male magicians acted from a position of control and command commensurate with their social position in a patriarchal society; other men, however, used the notion of magic to subvert gender ideals while still aiming to attain hegemony. Whilst women who claimed to perform magic were usually more submissive in their attempted dealings with the spirit world, some female practitioners employed magic to undermine the patriarchal culture and further their own agenda. Frances Timbers studies the practice of ritual magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries focusing especially on gender and sexual perspectives. Using the examples of well-known individuals who set themselves up as magicians (including John Dee, Simon Forman and William Lilly), as well as unpublished diaries and journals, literature and legal records, this book provides a unique analysis of early modern ceremonial magic from a gender perspective.
Download or read book Magic and Gender in Early Modern England written by Dr. Shokhan Rasool Ahmed and published by Author House. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic and Gender in Early Modern England surveys the history of male and female magic in early modern England and the factors that influenced what writers include in their work regarding magic and witchcraft. the book includes the following: --Three chapters that focus on how Renaissance drama deals with contemporary issues of witchcraft and how witchcraft was used as an element to explore ideas of power and gender in early modern England --Key secondary readings by influential critics --Selected sources and analogues for Shakespeare's Macbeth, Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, Thomas Middleton's the Witch, and the Witch of Edmonton by John Ford, Thomas Dekker, and William Rowley
Download or read book Crafting the Witch written by Heidi Breuer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. In the earlier texts, magic is predominantly a masculine pursuit, garnering its user prestige and power, but in the later texts, magic becomes a primarily feminine activity, one that marks its user as wicked and heretical. This project explores both the literary and the social motivations for this transformation, seeking an answer to the question, 'why did the witch become wicked?' Heidi Breuer traverses both the medieval and early modern periods and considers the way in which the representation of literary witches interacted with the culture at large, ultimately arguing that a series of economic crises in the fourteenth century created a labour shortage met by women. As women moved into the previously male-dominated economy, literary backlash came in the form of the witch, and social backlash followed soon after in the form of Renaissance witch-hunting. The witch figure serves a similar function in modern American culture because late-industrial capitalism challenges gender conventions in similar ways as the economic crises of the medieval period.
Download or read book Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe written by A. Rowlands and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-10-22 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Men – as accused witches, witch-hunters, werewolves and the demonically possessed – are the focus of analysis in this collection of essays by leading scholars of early modern European witchcraft. The gendering of witch persecution and witchcraft belief is explored through original case-studies from England, Scotland, Italy, Germany and France.
Download or read book Virtuous Necessity written by Jessica Murphy and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new way of looking at behavioral expectations for women in early modern England
Download or read book Witchcraft in Early Modern England written by James Sharpe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the renewed interest in the history of witches and witchcraft, this timely book provides an introduction to this fascinating topic, informed by the main trends of new thinking on the subject. Beginning with a discussion of witchcraft in the early modern period, and charting the witch panics that took place at this time, the author goes on to look at the historical debate surrounding the causes of the legal persecution of witches. Contemporary views of witchcraft put forward by judges, theological writers and the medical profession are examined, as is the place of witchcraft in the popular imagination. Jim Sharpe also looks at the gender dimensions of the witch persecution, and the treatment of witchcraft in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Supported by a range of compelling documents, the book concludes with an exploration of why witch panics declined in the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century.
Download or read book Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe A Reader written by Helen L. Parish and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe brings together a rich selection of essays which represent the most important historical research on religion, magic and superstition in early modern Europe. Each essay makes a significant contribution to the history of magic and religion in its own right, while together they demonstrate how debates over the topic have evolved over time, providing invaluable intellectual, historical, and socio-political context for readers approaching the subject for the first time. The essays are organised around five key themes and areas of controversy. Part One tackles superstition; Part Two, the tension between miracles and magic; Part Three, ghosts and apparitions; Part Four, witchcraft and witch trials; and Part Five, the gradual disintegration of the 'magical universe' in the face of scientific, religious and practical opposition. Each part is prefaced by an introduction that provides an outline of the historiography and engages with recent scholarship and debate, setting the context for the essays that follow and providing a foundation for further study. This collection is an invaluable toolkit for students of early modern Europe, providing both a focused overview and a springboard for broader thinking about the underlying continuities and discontinuities that make the study of magic and superstition a perennially fascinating topic.
Download or read book Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe written by Marianna Muravyeva and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book attempts to challenge the canonical gender concept while trying to specify what gender was in the medieval and early modern world. It tests, verifies, and challenges the methodology and use the concept(s) of gender specifically applicable to the period of great change and transition. The volume contains theoretical discussion supplemented by case studies of specific practices such as mysticism, witchcraft, crime, and sexual behavior.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America written by Brian P. Levack and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this Handbook, written by leading scholars working in the rapidly developing field of witchcraft studies, explore the historical literature regarding witch beliefs and witch trials in Europe and colonial America between the early fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries. During these years witches were thought to be evil people who used magical power to inflict physical harm or misfortune on their neighbours. Witches were also believed to have made pacts with the devil and sometimes to have worshipped him at nocturnal assemblies known as sabbaths. These beliefs provided the basis for defining witchcraft as a secular and ecclesiastical crime and prosecuting tens of thousands of women and men for this offence. The trials resulted in as many as fifty thousand executions. These essays study the rise and fall of witchcraft prosecutions in the various kingdoms and territories of Europe and in English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas. They also relate these prosecutions to the Catholic and Protestant reformations, the introduction of new forms of criminal procedure, medical and scientific thought, the process of state-building, profound social and economic change, early modern patterns of gender relations, and the wave of demonic possessions that occurred in Europe at the same time. The essays survey the current state of knowledge in the field, explore the academic controversies that have arisen regarding witch beliefs and witch trials, propose new ways of studying the subject, and identify areas for future research.
Download or read book Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe written by Jonathan Barry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-03-12 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important collection brings together both established figures and new researchers to offer fresh perspectives on the ever-controversial subject of the history of witchcraft. Using Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic as a starting point, the contributors explore the changes of the last twenty-five years in the understanding of early modern witchcraft, and suggest new approaches, especially concerning the cultural dimensions of the subject. Witchcraft cases must be understood as power struggles, over gender and ideology as well as social relationships, with a crucial role played by alternative representations. Witchcraft was always a contested idea, never fully established in early modern culture but much harder to dislodge than has usually been assumed. The essays are European in scope, with examples from Germany, France, and the Spanish expansion into the New World, as well as a strong core of English material.
Download or read book Magic in Early Modern England written by Andrew Moore and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-05-15 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book places early modern philosophy and political theory into conversation with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writing on magic: plays, spell books, treatises, and witch trial narratives. Reading works by Hobbes and Bacon alongside writing by necromancers and witch-hunters reveals a broad cultural obsession with supernatural power.
Download or read book Witchcraft Gender and Society in Early Modern Germany written by Jonathan Bryan Durrant and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the example of Eichstatt, this book challenges current witchcraft historiography by arguing that the gender of the witch-suspect was a product of the interrogation process and that the stable communities affected by persecution did not collude in its escalation.
Download or read book Gender in Early Modern England written by Laura Gowing and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-10-07 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise and stimulating book explores the history of gender in England between 1500 and 1700. The second edition has been thoroughly revised to include new material on global connections, masculinity and recent historiography. Amid the upheavals of the Reformation and Civil Wars, gender was political. Sexual difference and women’s roles were matters of public debate, while social and economic changes were impacting on work, family and marriage. The rich archives of law, state and family testify to the complex configurations of patriarchal order and resistance to it. Gender in Early Modern England provides insight into gender relations in a time when a stark hierarchy of gender co-existed with a surprising degree of female capacity, great potential for challenge and confrontation, and a persistent sense of the mystery of the body. Documents include early feminist argument, law, midwives’ books, recipes, protest, sexual insults, cross-dressers, women escaping slavery, royal favourites and petitions. With a chronology, who’s who, glossary, guide to further reading and previously unpublished archival documents, Gender in Early Modern England is the perfect resource for all students interested in the history of women and gender in England between 1500 and 1700.
Download or read book Conjuring Gender written by Frances Timbers and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation revisits the ceremonial magic techniques of male and female practitioners in England from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century. Analyses of magic manuscripts, personal writings, and court documents reveal how magic both reinforced and subverted existing gender ideologies. Individual case studies of well-known magicians such as John Dee, Simon Forman, and William Lilly, reveal that male magicians operated from a position of control and command, which was part of a larger project of controlling Nature. Some male magicians, such as Edward Kelly, used ritual magic to subvert gender ideals in order to attain hegemonic manhood. Studies of elusive female practitioners, such as Mary Parish, illustrate that women were largely subservient and submissive in their dealings with the spirit world, particularly in relation to the world of Fayrie. Nevertheless, female operators could also employ magic to undermine hegemonic ideals of gender to further their own individual agendas.I also investigate how female practitioners employed the body and its reproductive functions to resist patriarchal power. The female body, as well as the bodies of the fairies and spirits, acted as sites where power could be negotiated. This not only reinforces the Foucaudian theory that the material body is at the centre of political ideologies, but also contributes to our understanding of why ceremonial magic became maligned when practised by women. By blending elements of ritual magic with folk practices, such as interaction with fairies and treasure hunting, female magicians reaffirmed the connection between magic and Nature.While women linked magic with Nature, some university-educated male practitioners reinforced the intellectual, scientific, and religious aspects of ceremonial magic. The case study of Elias Ashmole illustrates how some men erected boundaries around the occult. Homosocial spaces, such as speculative freemasonry lodges, provided a forum that could protect certain aspects of magic from the polluting influence of female magicians and men of lesser status such as cunning men. As a result, the bastardized fragments of magic that were at large within the popular culture were denounced as mere fortune-telling or cozening. iii.
Download or read book Magic and Masculinity in Early Modern English Drama written by Ian McAdam and published by Penn State University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 1100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The prevalent worldview of early modern England, shaped by Protestantism, dismissed magical belief as an ideological delusion inherent to Catholicism, while also encouraging a strong sense of individualism, through which a new masculinity found expression. This study asks why, then, did magical self-empowerment retain such a hold on that society's imagination?"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Gender and Witchcraft written by Brian P. Levack and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witchcraft and magical beliefs have captivated historians and artists for millennia, and stimulated an extraordinary amount of research among scholars in a wide range of disciplines. This new collection, from the editor of the highly acclaimed 1992 set, Articles onWitchcraft, Magic, and Demonology, extends the earlier volumes by bringing together the most important articles of the past twenty years and covering the profound changes in scholarly perspective over the past two decades. Featuring thematically organized papers from a broad spectrum of publications, the volumes in this set encompass the key issues and approaches to witchcraft research in fields such as gender studies, anthropology, sociology, literature, history, psychology, and law. This new collection provides students and researchers with an invaluable resource, comprising the most important and influential discussions on this topic. A useful introductory essay written by the editor precedes each volume.
