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Author: Thomas Willard Robisheaux
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 438
ISBN-13: 9780393065510
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExploring one of Europe's last witch panics, historian Thomas Robisheaux brings to life the story of an entire world caught between superstition and modernity in a high-stakes drama that led to charges of sorcery and witchcraft against an entire family.
Author: Thomas Robisheaux
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Published: 2009-02
Total Pages: 432
ISBN-13: 9780393349689
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOn the night of a festive holiday in 1672, a young mother died in agony. Was it a natural death, murder--or witchcraft? Drawing on vivid court documents, eyewitness accounts, and an early autopsy report, historian Robisheaux explores one of Europe's last witch panics. 22 illustrations, 3 maps.
Author: Ivan Bunn
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-11-04
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 1134696337
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 1662, Amy Denny and Rose Cullender were accused of witchcraft, and, in one of the most important of such cases in England, stood trial and were hanged in Bury St Edmunds. A Trial of Witches is a complete account of this sensational trial and an analysis of the court procedures, and the larger social, cultural and political concerns of the period. In a critique of the official process, the book details how the erroneous conclusions of the trial were achieved. The authors consider the key participants in the case, including the judge and medical witness, their institutional importance, their part in the fate of the women and their future careers. Through detailed research of primary sources, the authors explore the important implications of this case for the understanding of hysteria, group mentality, social forces and the witchcraft phenomenon as a whole.
Author: Lara Apps
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2018-07-30
Total Pages: 201
ISBN-13: 152613750X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This is the first ever full book on the subject of male witches addressing incidents of witch-hunting in both Britain and Europe. Uses feminist categories of gender analysis to critique the feminist agenda that mars many studies. Advances a more bal. Critiques historians’ assumptions about witch-hunting, challenging the marginalisation of male witches by feminist and other historians. Shows that large numbers of men were accused of witchcraft in their own right, in some regions, more men were accused than women. It uses feminist categories of gender analysis to challenge recent arguments and current orthodoxies providing a more balanced and complex view of witch-hunting and ideas about witches in their gendered forms than has hitherto been available.
Author: David Frye
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2019-08-27
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 1501172719
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“A lively popular history of an oft-overlooked element in the development of human society” (Library Journal)—walls—and a haunting and eye-opening saga that reveals a startling link between what we build and how we live. With esteemed historian David Frye as our raconteur-guide in Walls, which Publishers Weekly praises as “informative, relevant, and thought-provoking,” we journey back to a time before barriers of brick and stone even existed—to an era in which nomadic tribes vied for scarce resources, and each man was bred to a life of struggle. Ultimately, those same men would create edifices of mud, brick, and stone, and with them effectively divide humanity: on one side were those the walls protected; on the other, those the walls kept out. The stars of this narrative are the walls themselves—rising up in places as ancient and exotic as Mesopotamia, Babylon, Greece, China, Rome, Mongolia, Afghanistan, the lower Mississippi, and even Central America. As we journey across time and place, we discover a hidden, thousand-mile-long wall in Asia's steppes; learn of bizarre Spartan rituals; watch Mongol chieftains lead their miles-long hordes; witness the epic siege of Constantinople; chill at the fate of French explorers; marvel at the folly of the Maginot Line; tense at the gathering crisis in Cold War Berlin; gape at Hollywood’s gated royalty; and contemplate the wall mania of our own era. Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as “provocative, well-written, and—with walls rising everywhere on the planet—timely,” Walls gradually reveals the startling ways that barriers have affected our psyches. The questions this book summons are both intriguing and profound: Did walls make civilization possible? And can we live without them? Find out in this masterpiece of historical recovery and preeminent storytelling.
Author: Lyndal Roper
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2012-08-20
Total Pages: 366
ISBN-13: 0813933005
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn an exciting new approach to witchcraft studies, The Witch in the Western Imagination examines the visual representation of witches in early modern Europe. With vibrant and lucid prose, Lyndal Roper moves away from the typical witchcraft studies on trials, beliefs, and communal dynamics and instead considers the witch as a symbolic and malleable figure through a broad sweep of topics and time periods. Employing a wide selection of archival, literary, and visual materials, Roper presents a series of thematic studies that range from the role of emotions in Renaissance culture to demonology as entertainment, and from witchcraft as female embodiment to the clash of cultures on the brink of the Enlightenment. Rather than providing a vast synthesis or survey, this book is questioning and exploratory in nature and illuminates our understanding of the mental and psychic worlds of people in premodern Europe. Roper’s spectrum of theoretical interests will engage readers interested in cultural history, psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, art history, and early modern European studies. These essays, three of which appear here for the first time in print, are complemented by more than forty images, from iconic paintings to marginal drawings on murals or picture frames. In her unique focus on the imagery of witchcraft, Lyndal Roper has succeeded in adding a compelling new dimension to the study of witchcraft in early modern Europe.
Author: David L Weddle
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2010-07-09
Total Pages: 269
ISBN-13: 0814794831
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDespite the dominance of scientific explanation in the modern world, at the beginning of the twenty-first century faith in miracles remains strong, particularly in resurgent forms of traditional religion. In Miracles, David L. Weddle examines how five religious traditions—Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—understand miracles, considering how they express popular enthusiasm for wondrous tales, how they provoke official regulation because of their potential to disrupt authority, and how they are denied by critics within each tradition who regard belief in miracles as an illusory distraction from moral responsibility. In dynamic and accessible prose, Weddle shows us what miracles are, what they mean, and why, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, they are still significant today: belief in miracles sustains the hope that, if there is a reality that surpasses our ordinary lives, it is capable of exercising—from time to time—creative, liberating, enlightening, and healing power in our world.
Author: Stuart Clark
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-07-19
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13: 033398529X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDifferent 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 and what was its place in their culture? The new 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 phenomenon - to 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: Laura Kounine
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2017-02-09
Total Pages: 322
ISBN-13: 1137529032
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBringing 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.
Author: Malcolm Gaskill
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2010-03-25
Total Pages: 168
ISBN-13: 0191613681
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWitchcraft is a subject that fascinates us all, and everyone knows what a witch is - or do they? From childhood most of us develop a sense of the mysterious, malign person, usually an old woman. Historically, too, we recognize witch-hunting as a feature of pre-modern societies. But why do witches still feature so heavily in our cultures and consciousness? From Halloween to superstitions, and literary references such as Faust and even Harry Potter, witches still feature heavily in our society. In this Very Short Introduction Malcolm Gaskill challenges all of this, and argues that what we think we know is, in fact, wrong. Taking a historical perspective from the ancient world to contemporary paganism, Gaskill reveals how witchcraft has meant different things to different people and that in every age it has raised questions about the distinction between fantasy and reality, faith and proof. Telling stories, delving into court records, and challenging myths, Gaskill examines the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and explores the reinvention of witchcraft - as history, religion, fiction, and metaphor. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
