scholarly journals The Seventeenth Century English Lower-Class Women’s Theatricality and Transgression in The Witch of Edmonton

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-167
Author(s):  
Hee-Won Lee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
The Witch

Witches and Forgers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Mandelbrote
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
The Bible ◽  
God's Word ◽  
1 Samuel ◽  
The Witch

Scepticism and loyalty represent the poles of van Dale’s career. Two contexts have been mentioned as relevant here: the seventeenth-century attack on magic and superstition, and the circles of friendship that created a contemporary Republic of Letters. This chapter evaluates both contexts, as well as others that may throw light on his relatively neglected attitude to the text of the Bible. It brings into focus two important intellectual episodes: his treatment of the account of the Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28:3–25), and his engagement with Hellenistic sources relating to the text of the Old Testament, especially to the miraculous composition of the Septuagint. These issues brought van Dale to ask questions about God’s Word. The chapter explores the limits of his scepticism, the extent of his scholarship, and the role of friendship and isolation in his development. Finally, it draws attention to his place in contemporary Mennonite debates.

A Note on the Witch-Familiar in Seventeenth Century England

Folklore ◽  
1947 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. H. Amphlett Micklewright
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Witch

scholarly journals Witchcraft and the Enlightenment: Reinterpreting the Witch in the Eighteenth Century

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Handley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
The Witch ◽  
New Research ◽  
Point Of Intersection

New Research Idea: Representing a point of intersection between the natural, the supernatural, law, fact, and fiction, witchcraft makes an excellent case for studying changes in the belief systems during the eighteenth century. Witchcraft remained a topic of intense discussion and heated debates long after it ceased being officially treated as a crime. The period is extraordinarily rich in literary material concerning witchcraft, from pamphlets, essays, news sheets and legal histories to pantomimes, poems, chapbooks, and at least one novel, yet these have so far received relatively sparse academic attention. In order to obtain a deeper knowledge and understanding of the development and the major and minor changes in the discourse on witchcraft during the 1700s, the proposed project analyses its manifestations in English and Scottish non-fiction and literary texts spanning the above-mentioned forms and genres. Exploring the mediation of texts/narratives/stories and examining the sociocultural considerations of “how and why stories are re-worked in different historical and cultural contexts” (Elliott: 149), the proposed project studies how the various texts enter into dialogues with each other and how they play into other concerns. In doing so it gives particular attention to shifts in the representations of the witch figure, its manifestations, function, and voice, and its interrelationship with gender politics. The proposed study builds upon and expands my previous research into the seventeenth century: “Scripting the Witch: Voice, Gender and Power in The Witch of Edmonton (Rowley, Dekker and Ford 1621) and Witchcraft (Baillie 1836)” (Master’s Thesis Nov 2016 UiT).  

Gender and emotions in the visual and intellectual imagination

2018 ◽  
pp. 178-220
Author(s):  
Laura Kounine
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Profile Changes ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Large Groups

This chapter examines representations of the witch in the visual and intellectual imagination. Early sixteenth-century images show witches as female and eroticized. Yet by the seventeenth century, these ‘typical’ representations break down, and visual depictions include large groups of men and women. As the gendered profile changes, so do the emotions depicted: from female lust to collective debauchery, from envy to fear. We witness the same ambiguity in depictions of the witch in early modern intellectual thought. Focusing on Nicolas Remy’s Daemonolatria (1595), this chapter shows that intellectual thought could conceptualize both male and female witches, which challenges the idea that witches were women, because of their heightened emotions and their increased vulnerability to the Devil’s temptations. Instead, witchcraft could be understood through the lens of a violent Devil, who, driven by jealousy and anger, subjugated both men and women through force.

The Weird Sisters and the Circean Myth of Femininity in Geoffrey Wright’s Macbeth/Las brujas, Circe y el mito de la feminidad en el Macbeth de Geoffrey Wright

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Marino-Faza
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
James I ◽  
The Witch ◽  
And Gender

One of the typical figures used to construct monstrosity in terms of gender is that of the witch and, probably, one of the best well-known portrayals of these women appears in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Written at the beginning of the seventeenth-century, soon after James I became king of England, this theatre play echoes contemporary beliefs on witchcraft and portrays the weird sisters as the characters that set in motion all the events in the play. The witch is understood as an abject figure and gender becomes a key element in this construction of monstrosity. Accordingly, Geoffrey Wright’s adaptation to the screen, uses the mythological figure of Circe as a basis for this contemporary representation of femininity, stressing not only witches’ threatening potential but also the danger their highly erotized nature poses.

scholarly journals The Witch-cleric Stereotype in a Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Context*

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Rowlands
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Innocent People ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
Witch Trials ◽  
Wide Perspective ◽  
The Witch ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This article enhances our understanding of the development and dynamism of early modern witch stereotypes by focusing on the stereotype of the witch-cleric, the Christian minister imagined by early modern people as working for the devil instead of God, baptizing people into witchcraft, working harmful magic and even officiating at witches’ gatherings. I show how this stereotype first developed in relation to Catholic clerics in demonology, print culture and witch-trials, then examine its emergence in relation to Protestant clerics in Germany and beyond, using case studies of pastors from the Lutheran territory of Rothenburg ob der Tauber from 1639 and 1692 to explore these ideas in detail. I also offer a broader comparison of beliefs about Protestant witch-clerics and their susceptibility to formal prosecution with their Catholic counterparts in early modern Germany, showing that cases involving Protestant witch-clerics were part of a cross-confessional phenomenon that is best understood in a comparative, Europe-wide perspective. In addition to showing how the witch-cleric stereotype changed over time and spread geographically, I conclude by arguing that three distinct variants of this stereotype had emerged by the seventeenth century: the Catholic ‘witch-priest’ and Protestant ‘witch-pastor’ (who were supposedly witches themselves) and the overzealous clerical ‘witch-master’, who was thought to do the devil’s work by helping persecute innocent people for witchcraft. Despite these stereotypes, however, relatively few clerics of either confession were tried and executed as witches; overall, patriarchy worked to protect men of the cloth from the worst excesses of witch persecution.

scholarly journals Introduction: Histories and Contexts in The Witch of Edmonton

Early Theatre ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Dean
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Inside Out

This Issues in Review invites us to think afresh about worlds turned inside out and upside down during the transformative decades of the first half of the seventeenth century. The contributions situate The Witch of Edmonton by focusing on marriage, women, and property; on swearing and the reformation of manners; on witchcraft, gender, and social relations; and on the role of emotions in shaping the play’s meaning. Taking the play's argument as the starting point, the introduction identifies a number of themes that bring the three plots – Frank’s bigamous marriage and his murder of Susan, Elizabeth Sawyer’s turn to witchcraft, and Cuddy’s flirtation with the supernatural – into conversation with one another. Locating its historical, spatial, and temporal contexts shows how the playwrights addressed contemporary concerns about the rapidly changing and much discussed world around them    

scholarly journals Autobiographical Writings

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Hodgkin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Spiritual Autobiography ◽  
Public Voice ◽  
Modern Self ◽  
Self Transcendence

Emerging out of the traditions of exemplary lives and self-analysis at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the genre of spiritual autobiography writing is fluid and unstable both textually and generically. The individualism that has often been taken to define the autobiographical project is problematized in these accounts, which tend to foreground self-transcendence over self-assertion, collective over individual identities, and exemplarity over uniqueness. The spiritual framework provides a language of self-narrative and self-analysis, structured around affliction and redemption, and privileging inward over outward experiences. As a mode which insists on the truth of experience, it allows marginal selves (including women and lower-class men) a public voice, above all in the gathered churches of the revolutionary decades and after, while also containing those voices within tight conventions. The simultaneous restrictions and liberations of these various frames offer important perspectives on debates about the early modern self.

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