Jane P. Davidson

Languages of witchcraft : narrative, ideology and meaning in early modern culture

Preface Notes of Contributors Introduction S. Clark PART 1: HISTORY AND STORY IN WITCHCRAFT TRIALS Texts of Authority: Witchcraft Accusations and the Demonstration of Truth in Early Modern England P. Rushton Understanding Witchcraft M. Gibson Witches and Witnesses in Old and New England M. Gaskill Sounds of Silence: Fairies and Incest in Scottish Witchcraft Stories D. Purkiss PART 2: CONTEXTS OF WITCHCRAFT Towards a Politics of Witchcraft in Early Modern England P. Elmer The Religion of Reginald Scot D. Wootton Hell Upon Earth or the Language of the Playhouse J. Barry PART 3: HOW CONTEMPORARIES READ WITCHCRAFT Circling the Devil: Witch-doctors and Magic Healers in Early Modern Lorraine R. Briggs Witchcraft as Metaphor: Infanticide and its Translations in Aragon in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries M. Tausiet Witchcraft and Forensic Medicine in Seventeenth-Century Germany T. Robisheaux Reasoning with Unreason: Visions, Witchcraft and Madness in Early Modern England K. Hodgkin Index

Reading witchcraft : stories of early English witches

In this original study of witchcraft, Gibson explores the stories told by and about witches and their victims through trial records, early news books, pamphlets and fascinating personal accounts. The author discusses the issues surrounding the interpretation of original historical sources and demonstrates that their representations of witchcraft are far from straight forward or reliable. Innovative and thought-provoking, this book sheds new light on early modern peoples responses to witches and on the sometimes bizarre flexibility of the human imagination.

Wonders, marvels, and monsters in early modern culture

The essays in this collection reveal a variety of discursive practices of the marvelous and establish the variety of uses to which the marvelous could be summoned.

Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany

In the late eighteenth century, Catholic priest Johann Joseph Gassner (1727--1779) discovered that he had extraordinary powers of exorcism. Deciding that demons were responsible for most human ailments, he healed thousands, rich and poor, Protestant and Catholic. In this book H. C. Erik Midelfort delves deeply into records of the time to explore Gassners remarkable exorcising campaign, chronicle the official efforts to curb him, and reconstruct the sufferings of the afflicted. Gassners activities triggered a Catholic religious revival as well as a noisy skeptical reaction. In response to those who doubted that he was really casting out demons, Gassner marshaled hundreds of eyewitness reports that seemed to prove his exorcisms really worked. Midelfort describes the enormous public controversy that resulted, and he demonstrates that the Gassner episode yields important insights into the German Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, the limitations of eighteenth-century debate, and the ongoing role of magic and belief in an age of scientific enlightenment.