The Witch’s Generic, Literary and Filmic Background

After a brief overview of theories of genre, the chapter argues that The Witch can best be understood as participating in the folk horror genre. While folk horror is most often associated with British films such as The Wicker Man (1973) and Witchfinder General (1968), the chapter argues for particular traditions of New England folk horror, as evident in films such as The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) and The Blair Witch Project (1999).

Introduction

This book is about politics, exploring the general outlook of a group of Americans called Whigs. Between 1834 and 1856, the Whigs were one of the two great political parties in the United States, battling their opponents, the Jacksonian Democrats, for office, prestige, power, and ideas. Boasting famous members such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and William Henry Seward, they supported tariffs, banks, internal improvements, moral reform, and public education....

The American Musical and the Faustian Bargain

The history of the American musical is framed by spectacular successes driven by Faustian elements: The Black Crook (1866, running for decades, based loosely on Weber’s Der Freischütz [The Freeshooter]) and The Phantom of the Opera (1988; still running as of 2019). Yet, straightforwardly Faust-based musicals are rare, with Damn Yankees (1955) being the single obvious example. A discussion of Damn Yankees relates it to other treatments in popular culture, including the film version of The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), as a basis for a wider discussion of Faustian elements deployed in American musical theater, including magic, striving, earning, idealism, temptation, and sexuality, leading to a consideration of the Faustian bargain of the genre itself, which uses the magic of music, dance, sex, and spectacle to seduce audiences and achieve commercial success, but at the apparent price of its artistic soul.

“So Much a Piece of Nature”: Emerson, Webster, and the Transcendental Constitution

This essay tracks Ralph Waldo Emerson's obsession with Daniel Webster, from early hero-worship to bitter disillusionment over the Fugitive Slave Act to posthumous vindication. It argues that Webster's trajectory parallels that of the Constitution, and concludes that the postbellum Constitution embodies Webster's positivist reverence and Emerson's faith in higher law.

2 The Caroline Incident—1837

This contribution summarizes the facts of the celebrated incident from 1837, in which British militia from Upper Canada crossed to the US shore of the Niagara River and set adrift a small rebel-operated vessel, The Caroline (which drifted over the Falls). The chapter cites the lengthy correspondence between US Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, and British Government’s representatives in Washington (Mr Fox and Lord Ashburton), in which Webster repeatedly used the celebrated Caroline formula (“a necessity of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation”). The case is referred to, even today, in discussions of anticipatory self-defence, the requirements of necessity and proportionality, and the use of force against non-State actors. The chapter concludes by examining differing views on the current relevance of the Caroline incident and formula.