2011/10/01 by Sarah F. Williams
Arts and Humanities · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Financial Crisis of the 21st Century #Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
paper · doi:10.1080/01411896.2011.614169
openalex publication_date 2011/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The early modern English broadside ballad was a single-sheet tabloid publication combining poetry, decorative woodcuts, music, and embodied performance. It was through these vehicles of mass communication, and the patterned use of accompanying tunes, that Jacobean society constructed specific musical stereotypes of witches as aural excess. Through an examination of early modern theories on the efficacy of music, text, and performance, and a cross-examination of recurring popular tunes associated with broadside ballads describing witches, this article posits that early modern English witches were categorized and represented not only by their social status or gender but also by their musical habits.