The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations - Rilegato

Purkiss, Diane

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0415087619 ISBN 13: 9780415087612

Casa editrice: Routledge, 1996

Riassunto

'Diane Purkiss ... insists on taking witches seriously. Her refusal to write witch-believers off as unenlightened has produced some richly intelligent meditations on their -- and our -- world.' - The Observer

'An invigorating and challenging book ... sets many hares running.' - The Times Higher Education Supplement

Su questo libro

Product Description:

A symbol of everything that is dark about the past and woman, the witch continues to fascinate us in the late twentieth century. The Witch in History explores the sources of that fascination and its manifold forms through court records, early modern dramas, and the modern histories and fictions which draw upon them. This book argues that in early modern England, the witch was a woman's fantasy and not simply a male nightmare. Through witch-beliefs and stories about witches, early modern women were able to express and manage powerful and passionate feelings which still resonate for us today, feelings which could not be uttered in a seventeenth century context: unconscious fears of and fury with children and mothers. In our own era, groups as diverse as women writers, academic historians and radical feminists have found in the witch a figure who justifies and defines their own identities. Then too, there are those who still call themselves witches in 1990s Britain, who still practise magic and who invent their own histories of witchcraft to sustain them. Constantly reworked and debated, the witch is central to all these groups. Looking at texts from colonial narratives to court masques, trial records to folktales, and literary texts from Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, this book shows how the witch acts as a carrier for the fears, desires and fantasies of women and men both now and in the early modern period.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Routledge
• Data di pubblicazione: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0415087619
• ISBN 13: 9780415087612
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 308