Languages of Witchcraft : Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture

by Clark, Stuart

• ISBN13: 9780333793480
• ISBN10: 033379348X
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2001-01-03
• Publisher: Red Globe Pr

Summary

Different conceptions of the world and of reality have made witchcraft possible in some societies and impossible in others. How did the people of early modern Europe experience it, what was it, and what was its place in their culture? The news essays in this collection illustrate the latest trends in witchcraft research and in cultural history in general. After three decades in which the social analysis of witchcraft accusations has dominated the subject, they turn instead to its significance and meaning as a cultural phenomenonto the "languages" of witchcraft, rather than its causes. As a result, witchcraft seems less startling than it once was, yet more revealing of the world in which it occurred.

Author Biography

Stuart Clark is Professor of Early Modern History, University of Wales Swansea.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Notes on Contributors	xi
Introduction	1	(18)
Stuart Clark
Part 1 History and Story in Witchcraft Trials	19	(80)
Texts of Authority: Witchcraft Accusations and the Demonstration of Truth in Early Modern England	21	(20)
Peter Rushton
Understanding Witchcraft? Accusers' Stories in Print in Early Modern England	41	(14)
Marion Gibson
Witches and Witnesses in Old and New England	55	(26)
Malcolm Gaskill
Sounds of Silence: Fairies and Incest in Scottish Witchcraft Stories	81	(18)
Diane Purkiss
Part 2 Contexts of Witchcraft	99	(60)
Towards a Politics of Witchcraft in Early Modern England	101	(18)
Peter Elmer
Reginald Scot/ Abraham Fleming/ The Family of Love	119	(20)
David Wootton
Hell upon Earth or the Language of the Playhouse	139	(20)
Jonathan Barry
Part 3 How Contemporaries Read Witchcraft	159	(78)
Circling the Devil: Witch-Doctors and Magical Healers in Early Modern Lorraine	161	(18)
Robin Briggs
Witchcraft as Metaphor: Infanticide and its Translations in Aragon in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries	179	(18)
Maria Tausiet
Witchcraft and Forensic Medicine in Seventeenth-Century Germany	197	(20)
Thomas Robisheaux
Reasoning with Unreason: Visions, Witchcraft, and Madness in Early Modern England	217	(20)
Katharine Hodgkin
Index	237