2008/11/18 by MALCOLM GASKILL, Malcolm Gaskill · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · #History of Emotions Research #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
paper · doi:10.1017/s0018246x0800719x
ABSTRACT In recent years the outpouring of historical work on witchcraft has been prodigious. Twenty-first-century studies encompass every conceivable chronological and geographical area, from antiquity to the present, Massachusetts to Muscovy. Approaches have been varied, with witchcraft explored as an intellectual, legal, political, social, cultural, and psychological phenomenon. Of particular interest – and difficulty – is the ‘reality’ of witchcraft: how historians might recover contemporary meanings, beyond the meanings imposed by rationalists, romantics, and social scientists. This article examines nine books from the last five years to assess the state of the field, and to offer some suggestions for research in the future.