Download or read book Reading Witchcraft written by Marion Gibson and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading Witchcraft explores the stories told by and about 'witches' and their 'victims', and questions what can be recovered from their trial records, pamphlets and personal accounts. It is an invaluable study of witchcraft stories.
Download or read book Early Modern Witches written by Marion Gibson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-10-07 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of pamphlets describes fifteen English witchcraft cases in detail, vividly recreating events to give the reader the illusion of actually being present at witchcraft accusations, trials and hangings. But how much are we victims of literary manipulation by these texts? The pamphlets are presented in annotated format, to allow the reader to decide. Some of the texts appear in print for the first time in three centuries, whilst others are newly edited to give a clearer picture of sources.
Download or read book Witchcraft the Devil and Emotions in Early Modern England written by Charlotte-Rose Millar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book represents the first systematic study of the role of the Devil in English witchcraft pamphlets for the entire period of state-sanctioned witchcraft prosecutions (1563-1735). It provides a rereading of English witchcraft, one which moves away from an older historiography which underplays the role of the Devil in English witchcraft and instead highlights the crucial role that the Devil, often in the form of a familiar spirit, took in English witchcraft belief. One of the key ways in which this book explores the role of the Devil is through emotions. Stories of witches were made up of a complex web of emotionally implicated accusers, victims, witnesses, and supposed perpetrators. They reveal a range of emotional experiences that do not just stem from malefic witchcraft but also, and primarily, from a witch’s links with the Devil. This book, then, has two main objectives. First, to suggest that English witchcraft pamphlets challenge our understanding of English witchcraft as a predominantly non-diabolical crime, and second, to highlight how witchcraft narratives emphasized emotions as the primary motivation for witchcraft acts and accusations.
Download or read book Reading Witchcraft written by Marion Gibson and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading Witchcraft explores the stories told by and about 'witches' and their 'victims', and questions what can be recovered from their trial records, pamphlets and personal accounts. It is an invaluable study of witchcraft stories.
Download or read book Witchcraft in Early North America written by Alison Games and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-10-16 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witchcraft in Early North America investigates European, African, and Indian witchcraft beliefs and their expression in colonial America. Alison Games's engaging book takes us beyond the infamous outbreak at Salem, Massachusetts, to look at how witchcraft was a central feature of colonial societies in North America. Her substantial and lively introduction orients readers to the subject and to the rich selection of documents that follows. The documents begin with first encounters between European missionaries and Native Americans in New France and New Mexico, and they conclude with witch hunts among Native Americans in the years of the early American republic. The documents—some of which have never been published previously—include excerpts from trials in Virginia, New Mexico, and Massachusetts; accounts of outbreaks in Salem, Abiquiu (New Mexico), and among the Delaware Indians; descriptions of possession; legal codes; and allegations of poisoning by slaves. The documents raise issues central to legal, cultural, social, religious, and gender history. This fascinating topic and the book’s broad geographic and chronological coverage make this book ideally suited for readers interested in new approaches to colonial history and the history of witchcraft.
Download or read book Witchcraft in England 1558 1618 written by Barbara Rosen and published by Syracuse Studies on Peace and. This book was released on 1991 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone interested in manifestations of witchcraft in Elizabethan and Jacobean England will find this book an invaluable source. Barbara Rosen has gathered and edited a rare collection of documents--pamphlets, reports, trial accounts, and other material--that describes the experience, interpretation, and punishment of witchcraft in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In her introduction, Rosen explores the full range of practices and beliefs associated with witchcraft and situates these phenomena in historical context. She explains how ignorance of science and medicine combined with social circumstance and religious ideology to shape popular perceptions and superstitions. Distinguishing between English and Continental forms of witchcraft, she also examines the legal definitions, disciplines, and punishments applied to wizards, witches, wise women, and conjures in the Elizabethan age. The pamphlets and other original texts have been modernized in certain respects to make them more accessible to general readers. But the book retains its value for scholars: omissions are detailed in the notes and additions marked; obsolete words and grammar are explained in the glossary. Originally published in England in 1970 under the title Witchcraft, this book appears now for the first time in paperback and includes a new preface by the editor.
Download or read book The Discovery of Witches written by Matthew Hopkins and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Discovery of Witches" by Matthew Hopkins. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Download or read book Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain written by Joad Raymond and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the printed pamphlet in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain.
Download or read book The Witchcraft Reader written by Darren Oldridge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-04 with total page 709 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Witchcraft Reader offers a wide range of historical perspectives on the subject of witchcraft in a single, accessible volume, exploring the enduring hold that it has on human imagination. The witch trials of the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have inspired a huge and expanding scholarly literature, as well as an outpouring of popular representations. This fully revised and enlarged third edition brings together many of the best and most important works in the field. It explores the origins of witchcraft prosecutions in learned and popular culture, fears of an imaginary witch cult, the role of religious division and ideas about the Devil, the gendering of suspects, the making of confessions and the decline of witch beliefs. An expanded final section explores the various "revivals" and images of witchcraft that continue to flourish in contemporary Western culture. Equipped with an extensive introduction that foregrounds significant debates and themes in the study of witchcraft, providing the extracts with a critical context, The Witchcraft Reader is essential reading for anyone with an interest in this fascinating subject.
Download or read book Supernatural and Secular Power in Early Modern England written by Marcus Harmes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the people of early modern England, the dividing line between the natural and supernatural worlds was both negotiable and porous - particularly when it came to issues of authority. Without a precise separation between ’science’ and ’magic’ the realm of the supernatural was a contested one, that could be used both to bolster and challenge various forms of authority and the exercise of power in early modern England. In order to better understand these issues, this volume addresses a range of questions regarding the ways in which ideas, beliefs and constructions of the supernatural threatened and conflicted with authority, as well as how the power of the supernatural could be used by authorities (monarchical, religious, legal or familial) to reinforce established social norms. Drawing upon a range of historical, literary and dramatic texts the collection reveals intersecting early modern anxieties in relation to the supernatural, issues of control and the exercise of power at different levels of society, from the upper echelons of power at court to local and domestic spaces, and in a range of publication contexts - manuscript sources, printed prose texts and the early modern stage. Divided into three sections - ’Magic at Court’, ’Performance, Text and Language’ and ’Witchcraft, the Devil and the Body’ - the volume offers a broad cultural approach to the subject that reflects current research by a range of early modern scholars from the disciplines of history and literature. By bringing scholars into an interdisciplinary dialogue, the case studies presented here generate fresh insights within and between disciplines and different methodologies and approaches, which are mutually illuminating.
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 The Appearance of Witchcraft written by Charles Zika and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2008 Katharine Briggs Award. For centuries the witch has been a powerful figure in the European imagination; but the creation of this figure has been hidden from our view. Charles Zika’s groundbreaking study investigates how the visual image of the witch was created in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe. He charts the development of the witch as a new visual subject, showing how the traditional imagery of magic and sorcery of medieval Europe was transformed into the sensationalist depictions of witches in the pamphlets and prints of the sixteenth century. This book shows how artists and printers across the period developed key visual codes for witchcraft, such as the cauldron and the riding of animals. It demonstrates how influential these were in creating a new iconography for representing witchcraft incorporating themes such as the power of female sexuality, male fantasy, moral reform, divine providence and punishment, the superstitions of non-Christian peoples and the cannibalism of the new world. Lavishly illustrated and encompassing in its approach, The Appearance of Witchcraft is the first systematic study of the visual representation of witchcraft in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It will give the reader a unique insight into how the image of the witch evolved in the early modern world.
Download or read book John Stearne s Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft written by Scott Eaton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-31 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1645-7, John Stearne led the most significant outbreak of witch-hunting in England. As accusations of witchcraft spread across East Anglia, Stearne and Matthew Hopkins were enlisted by villagers to identify and eradicate witches. After the trials finally subsided in 1648, Stearne wrote his only publication, A confirmation and discovery of witchcraft, but it had a limited readership. Consequently, Stearne and his work fell into obscurity until the 1800s, and were greatly overshadowed by Hopkins and his text. This book is the first study which analyses Stearne’s publication and contextualises his ideas within early modern intellectual cultures of religion, demonology, gender, science, and print in order to better understand the witch-finder’s beliefs and motives. The book argues that Stearne was a key player in the trials, that he was not a mainstream ‘puritan’, and that his witch-finding availed from contemporary science. It traces A confirmation’s reception history from 1648 to modern day and argues that the lack of research focusing on Stearne has resulted in misrepresentations of the witch-finder in the historiography of witchcraft. This book redresses the imbalance and seeks to provide an alternative reading of the East Anglian witch-hunt and of England’s premier witch-hunter, John Stearne.
Download or read book Demonology and Witch Hunting in Early Modern Europe written by Julian Goodare and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonology – the intellectual study of demons and their powers – contributed to the prosecution of thousands of witches. But how exactly did intellectual ideas relate to prosecutions? Recent scholarship has shown that some of the demonologists’ concerns remained at an abstract intellectual level, while some of the judges’ concerns reflected popular culture. This book brings demonology and witch-hunting back together, while placing both topics in their specific regional cultures. The book’s chapters, each written by a leading scholar, cover most regions of Europe, from Scandinavia and Britain through to Germany, France and Switzerland, and Italy and Spain. By focusing on various intellectual levels of demonology, from sophisticated demonological thought to the development of specific demonological ideas and ideas within the witch trial environment, the book offers a thorough examination of the relationship between demonology and witch-hunting. Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe is essential reading for all students and researchers of the history of demonology, witch-hunting and early modern Europe.
Download or read book Emotions in the History of Witchcraft written by Laura Kounine and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-09 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together leading historians, anthropologists, and religionists, this volume examines the unbridled passions of witchcraft from the Middle Ages to the present. Witchcraft is an intensely emotional crime, rooted in the belief that envy and spite can cause illness or even death. Witch-trials in turn are emotionally driven by the grief of alleged victims and by the fears of magistrates and demonologists. With examples ranging from Russia to New England, Germany to Cameroon, chapters cover the representation of emotional witches in demonology and art; the gendering of witchcraft as female envy or male rage; witchcraft as a form of bullying and witchcraft accusation as a form of therapy; love magic and demon-lovers; and the affective memorialization of the “Burning Times” among contemporary Pagan feminists. Wide-ranging and methodologically diverse, the book is appropriate for scholars of witchcraft, gender, and emotions; for graduate or undergraduate courses, and for the interested general reader.
Download or read book Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft written by Marion Gibson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-27 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft is an exploration of witchcraft in the literature of Britain and America from the 16th and 17th centuries through to the present day. As well as the themes of history and literature (politics and war, genre and intertextuality), the book considers issues of national identity, gender and sexuality, race and empire, and more. The complex fascination with witchcraft through the ages is investigated, and the importance of witches in the real world and in fiction is analysed. The book begins with a chapter dedicated to the stories and records of witchcraft in the Renaissance and up until the English Civil War, such as the North Berwick witches and the work of the ‘Witch Finder Generall’ Matthew Hopkins. The significance of these accounts in shaping future literature is then presented through the examination of extracts from key texts, such as Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Middleton’s The Witch, among others. In the second half of the book, the focus shifts to a consideration of the Romantic rediscovery of Renaissance witchcraft in the eighteenth century, and its further reinvention and continued presence throughout the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the establishment of witchcraft studies as a subject in its own right, the impact of the First World War and end of the British Empire on witchcraft fiction, the legacy of the North Berwick, Hopkins and Salem witch trials, and the position of witchcraft in culture, including filmic and televisual culture, today. Equipped with an extensive list of primary and secondary sources, Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft is essential reading for all students of witchcraft in modern British and American culture and early modern history and literature.
Download or read book A Companion to Tudor Literature written by Kent Cartwright and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Tudor Literature presents a collection of thirty-one newly commissioned essays focusing on English literature and culture from the reign of Henry VII in 1485 to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. Presents students with a valuable historical and cultural context to the period Discusses key texts and representative subjects, and explores issues including international influences, religious change, travel and New World discoveries, women’s writing, technological innovations, medievalism, print culture, and developments in music and in modes of seeing and reading