1st Edition

Witchcraft in the British Isles and New England New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology

Edited By Brian P. Levack Copyright 2002

    Witchcraft and magical beliefs have captivated historians and artists for millennia, and stimulated an extraordinary amount of research among scholars in a wide range of disciplines. This new collection, from the editor of the highly acclaimed 1992 set, Articles on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology , extends the earlier volumes by bringing together the most important articles of the past twenty years and covering the profound changes in scholarly perspective over the past two decades. Featuring thematically organized papers from a broad spectrum of publications, the volumes in this set encompass the key issues and approaches to witchcraft research in fields such as gender studies, anthropology, sociology, literature, history, psychology, and law. This new collection provides students and researchers with an invaluable resource, comprising the most important and influential discussions on this topic. A useful introductory essay written by the editor precedes each volume.

    Chapter 1 Chapter 5 Witchcraft Beliefs and Criminal Procedure in Early Modern England, C. R. Unsworth; Chapter 2 Possession, Witchcraft, and the Law in Jacobean England, Brian P. Levack; Chapter 3 Chapter Five Women, witchcraft and the legal process, Jim Sharpe; Chapter 4 THE LANCASHIRE WITCH TRIALS OF 1612 AND 1634 AND THE ECONOMICS OF WITCHCRAFT, J. T. Swain; Chapter 5 WITCHCRAFT, POLITICS AND “GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD” IN EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RYE, Annabel Gregory; Chapter 6 Witchcraft and Conflicting Visions of the Ideal Village Community, Anne Reiber DeWindt; Chapter 7 10. Witchcraft in early modern Kent: stereotypes and the background to accusations, Malcolm Gaskill; Chapter 8 Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Yorkshire: Accusations and Counter Measures; Chapter 9 5. Shakespeare and the English Witch-Hunts: Enclosing the Maternal Body, DEBORAH WILLIS; Chapter 10 Ghost and Witch in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Gillian Bennett; Chapter 11 Desire and Its Deformities: Fantasies of Witchcraft in the English Civil War, Diane Purkiss; Chapter 12 Chapter Six Witchcraft and power in early modern England: the case of Margaret Moore, Malcolm Gaskill; Chapter 13 9. The devil in East Anglia: the Matthew Hopkins trials reconsidered, Jim Sharpe; Chapter 14 12. Witchcraft repealed, Ian Bostridge; Chapter 15 12 The fear of the King is death: James VI and the witches of East Lothian, P. G. Maxwell-Stuart; Chapter 16 THE BARGARRAN WITCHCRAFT TRIAL — A PSYCHIATRIC REASSESSMENT, S. W. McDonald, A. Thom, A. Thom; Chapter 17 IRISH IMMUNITY TO WITCH-HUNTING, 1534–1711, Elwyn C. Lapoint; Chapter 18 “LIKE IMAGES MADE BLACK WITH THE LIGHTNING”: DISCOURSE AND THE BODY IN COLONIAL WITCHCRAFT, Michael Clark; Chapter 19 Tituba's Story, Bernard Rosenthal; Chapter 20 SPECTRAL EVIDENCE, NON-SPECTRAL ACTS OF WITCHCRAFT, AND CONFESSION AT SALEM IN 1692, Wendel D. Craker; Chapter 21 New England Witch-Hunting and the Politics of Reason in the Early Republic, Philip Gould; Chapter 22 Eros, the Devil, and the Gunning Woman: Sexuality and the Supernatural in European Antecedents and in the Seventeenth-Century Salem Witchcraft Gases, Louis J. Kern; Acknowledgments;

    Biography

    Brian P. Levack is John Green Regents Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. A former Guggenheim Fellow, his other writings on witchcraft include Articles on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology (1992), The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (1995), and Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1999). Dr. Levack is also a specialist in the history of early modern England and Scotland, and has written several books on the subject.