EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Science and Specters at Salem

Download or read book Science and Specters at Salem written by Matt Goldish and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-27 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most studies of the Salem witch trials focus on social history and the dynamics between accused and accusers. Science and Specters at Salem turns instead to the intellectual background of the judges to understand why they accepted controversial types of evidence. The role of judges in a witch trial was central. Goldish argues that in Salem the judges' acceptance of questionable touch tests and spectral evidence was a result of their intellectual commitments. Several of the Salem judges were highly educated, and some of them were adherents of a particular philosophical school in England led by Henry More and Joseph Glanvill which Goldish calls "the anti-Sadducees." He demonstrates how the ideas of these leading thinkers, friends of Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton, could have led to the deaths of twenty accused witches in Salem. This book will interest students and scholars of witch trials, American colonial history, Atlantic history, legal history and early modern Europe, as well as lay readers wanting a better understanding of Salem.

Book Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases  1648 1706

Download or read book Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648 1706 written by George Lincoln Burr and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Last Witches of England

Download or read book The Last Witches of England written by John Callow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fascinating and vivid." New Statesman "Thoroughly researched." The Spectator "Intriguing." BBC History Magazine "Vividly told." BBC History Revealed "A timely warning against persecution." Morning Star "Astute and thoughtful." History Today "An important work." All About History "Well-researched." The Tablet On the morning of Thursday 29 June 1682, a magpie came rasping, rapping and tapping at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its appearance, his servants and members of his family had, within a matter of hours, convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil sent by witches to destroy the fabric of their lives. As the result of these allegations, three women of Bideford came to be forever defined as witches. A Secretary of State brushed aside their case and condemned them to the gallows; to hang as the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime. Yet, the hatred of their neighbours endured. For Bideford, it was said, was a place of witches. Though 'pretty much worn away' the belief in witchcraft still lingered on for more than a century after their deaths. In turn, ignored, reviled, and extinguished but never more than half-forgotten, it seems that the memory of these three women - and of their deeds and sufferings, both real and imagined – was transformed from canker to regret, and from regret into celebration in our own age. Indeed, their example was cited during the final Parliamentary debates, in 1951, that saw the last of the witchcraft acts repealed, and their names were chanted, as both inspiration and incantation, by the women beyond the wire at Greenham Common. In this book, John Callow explores this remarkable reversal of fate, and the remarkable tale of the Bideford Witches.

Book Philosophical Writings of Henry More

Download or read book Philosophical Writings of Henry More written by H. More (D. D., The Platonist.) and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Witchcraft and Society in England and America  1550 1750

Download or read book Witchcraft and Society in England and America 1550 1750 written by Marion Gibson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-10-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of materials, including works of literature as well as historical documents, this work provides a broad view of how witches and magicians were represented in print and manuscript. It presents the voices of witches, accusers, ministers, physicians, poets, dramatists, magistrates, and witchfinders from both sides of the Atlantic.

Book The Witches of Selwood Forest

Download or read book The Witches of Selwood Forest written by Andrew Pickering and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient forest of Selwood straddles the borders of Somerset and Wiltshire and terminates in the south where these counties meet Dorset. Until now, a comprehensive study of its exceptionally rich history of demonological beliefs and witchcraft persecution in the early modern period has not been attempted. This book explores the connections between important theological texts written in the region, notably Richard Bernard’s Guide to the Grand-Jury Men (1627) and Joseph Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus (1681), influential local families such as the Hunts and the Hills, and the extraordinary witchcraft episodes associated with Shepton Mallet, Brewham, Stoke Trister, and elsewhere. In particular, it focuses on a little-known case in the village of Beckington in 1689, and shows how this was not a late, isolated episode, but an integral part of the wider Selwood Forest witchcraft story.

Book Shirley Jackson   s Dark Tales

Download or read book Shirley Jackson s Dark Tales written by Joan Passey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-22 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first dedicated exploration of the short fiction of Shirley Jackson for three decades, this volume takes an in-depth look at the themes and legacies of her 200-plus short stories. Recognized as the mother of contemporary horror, scholars from across the globe, and from a range of different disciplinary backgrounds, dig into the lasting impact of her work in light of its increasing relevance to contemporary critical preoccupations and the re-release of Jackson's work in 2016. Offering new methodologies to study her work, this volume calls upon ideas of intertextuality, ecocriticism and psychoanalysis to examine a broad range of themes from national identity, race, gender and class to domesticity, the occult, selfhood and mental illness. With consideration of her blockbuster works alongside later works that received much less critical attention, Shirley Jackson's Dark Tales promises a rich and dynamic expansion on previous scholarship of Jackson's oeuvre, both bringing her writing into the contemporary conversation, and ensuring her place in the canon of Horror fiction.

Book The Last Witch Craze

Download or read book The Last Witch Craze written by Tony McAleavy and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2022-06-15 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating account of man of letters John Aubrey’s investigation into the witch craze in 17th century England and the remarkable witch trials in Wiltshire. John Aubrey and other leading figures in the Royal Society promoted belief in witchcraft. Aubrey also had a dark secret. He personally practised a form of black witchcraft.

Book Mother Leakey and the Bishop

Download or read book Mother Leakey and the Bishop written by Peter Marshall and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-10-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Halloween 1636: sightings of the ghost of an old woman begin to be reported in the small English coastal town of Minehead, and a royal commission is sent to investigate. December 1640: a disgraced Protestant bishop is hanged in the Irish capital, Dublin, after being convicted of an 'unspeakable' crime. In this remarkable piece of historical detective work, Peter Marshall sets out to uncover the intriguing links between these two seemingly unconnected events. The result is a compelling tale of dark family secrets, of efforts to suppress them, and of the ways in which they finally come to light. It is also the story of a shocking seventeenth-century Church scandal which cast its shadow over religion and politics in Britain and Ireland for the best part of three centuries, drawing in a host of well known and not-so-well-known characters along the way, including Jonathan Swift, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Walter Scott. A fascinating story in its own right, Mother Leakey and the Bishop is also a sparkling demonstration of how the telling of stories is central to the way we remember the past, and can become part of the fabric of history itself.

Book Scepticism and belief in English witchcraft drama  1538   1681

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 334 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.

Book Enchanted Europe

    Book Details:
  • Author : Euan Cameron
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
  • Release : 2010-03-18
  • ISBN : 0199257825
  • Pages : 486 pages

Download or read book Enchanted Europe written by Euan Cameron and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enchanted Europe offers the first comprehensive account of Europe's long, complex relationship with its own folklore and popular religion. From debates over the efficacy of charms and spells, to belief in fairies and demons, Euan Cameron constructs a compelling narrative of the rise and fall of 'superstition' in the European mind.

Book Scottish Fairy Belief

    Book Details:
  • Author : Lizanne Henderson
  • Publisher : Dundurn
  • Release : 2001
  • ISBN : 9781862321908
  • Pages : 266 pages

Download or read book Scottish Fairy Belief written by Lizanne Henderson and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2001 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authorities told folk what they ought to believe, but what did they really believe? Throughout Scottish history, people have believed in fairies. They were a part of everyday life, as real as the sunrise, and as incontrovertible as the existence of God. While fairy belief was only a fragment of a much larger complex, the implications of studying this belief tradition are potentially vast, revealing some understanding of the worldview of the people of past centuries. This book, the first modern study of the subject, examines the history and nature of fairy belief, the major themes and motifs, the demonising attack upon the tradition, and the attempted reinstatement of the reality of fairies at the end of the seventeenth century, as well as their place in ballads and in Scottish literature.

Book Air s Appearance

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jayne Elizabeth Lewis
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2012-11-22
  • ISBN : 0226476715
  • Pages : 306 pages

Download or read book Air s Appearance written by Jayne Elizabeth Lewis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-11-22 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Air’s Appearance, Jayne Elizabeth Lewis enlists her readers in pursuit of the elusive concept of atmosphere in literary works. She shows how diverse conceptions of air in the eighteenth century converged in British fiction, producing the modern literary sense of atmosphere and moving novelists to explore the threshold between material and immaterial worlds. Air’s Appearance links the emergence of literary atmosphere to changing ideas about air and the earth’s atmosphere in natural philosophy, as well as to the era’s theories of the supernatural and fascination with social manners—or, as they are now known, “airs.” Lewis thus offers a striking new interpretation of several standard features of the Enlightenment—the scientific revolution, the decline of magic, character-based sociability, and the rise of the novel—that considers them in terms of the romance of air that permeates and connects them. As it explores key episodes in the history of natural philosophy and in major literary works like Paradise Lost, “The Rape of the Lock,” Robinson Crusoe, and The Mysteries of Udolpho, this book promises to change the atmosphere of eighteenth-century studies and the history of the novel.

Book The Decline of Magic

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Hunter
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2020-01-07
  • ISBN : 0300249462
  • Pages : 265 pages

Download or read book The Decline of Magic written by Michael Hunter and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history which overturns the received wisdom that science displaced magic in Enlightenment Britain In early modern Britain, belief in prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace. Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted. Yet in the eighteenth century such certainties were swept away. Credit for this great change is usually given to science – and in particular to the scientists of the Royal Society. But is this justified? Michael Hunter argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not scientists but freethinkers. While some scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly change did come about. When it did, this owed less to the testing of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.

Book Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers

Download or read book Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers written by David S. Sytsma and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Baxter, one of the 17th century's most famous Puritans, is known as an author of devotional literature. But he was also skilled in medieval philosophy. In this work, David Sytsma draws on largely unexamined works to present a chronogolical and thematic account of Baxter's relation to the people and concepts involved in the rise of mechanical philosophy in late-17th-century England

Book Witchcraft  Witch hunting  and Politics in Early Modern England

Download or read book Witchcraft Witch hunting and Politics in Early Modern England written by Peter Elmer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witchcraft, Witch-hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England constitutes a wide-ranging and original overview of the place of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the broader culture of early modern England. Based on a mass of new evidence extracted from a range of archives, both local and national, it seeks to relate the rise and decline of belief in witchcraft, alongside the legal prosecution of witches, to the wider political culture of the period. Building on the seminal work of scholars such as Stuart Clark, Ian Bostridge, and Jonathan Barry, Peter Elmer demonstrates how learned discussion of witchcraft, as well as the trials of those suspected of the crime, were shaped by religious and political imperatives in the period from the passage of the witchcraft statute of 1563 to the repeal of the various laws on witchcraft. In the process, Elmer sheds new light upon various issues relating to the role of witchcraft in English society, including the problematic relationship between puritanism and witchcraft as well as the process of decline.