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The Meaning of Thunder and Lightning: Stage Directions and Audience Expectations
Posted on March 11, 2013 | No CommentsThe linking of thunder and lightening with supernatural figures was not theatrical in origin; rather, the effects were a theatrical reproduction of unnatural disruptions generally believed to accompany the appearance and actions of figures such as witches, devils, and conjurers in the real world of the audience. -
‘An honest dog yet’: Performing The Witch of Edmonton
Posted on January 24, 2013 | No CommentsAt the climax of Dekker, Ford, and Rowley’s 1621 tragedy The Witch of Edmonton, the devil treats a young morris dancer named Cuddy Banks to a discourse on the relationship between the everyday world in which Cuddy lives and the demonic realm over which he himself reigns. -
Mother Shipton and the End of the World
Posted on December 21, 2012 | No Comments'A carriage without a horse shall go; Disaster fill the world with woe; In water iron then shall float; As easy as a wooden boat.' -
“The Nightmare in Early Modern England.”
Posted on December 10, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper was held at Victoria College by the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies and dealt with the idea of the nightmare and its evolution from demonic possession to medical malady. -
Victorian perspectives on the supernatural: The imaginary versus the real in two Brontë novels
Posted on October 31, 2012 | No CommentsVillette and Wuthering Heights exhibit a striking similarity: both rely on the gothic tradition (more specifically, on one of its elements, the supernatural) to evoke psychological realism. -
Some Bloody good reads for Halloween!
Posted on October 30, 2012 | No CommentsSome Bloody good reads for Halloween! -
Cunning Folk and Wizards in Early Modern England
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsI aim to offer an original perspective on white witchcraft in this period; revealing its relevance to the historical study of witchcraft in which it is often overshadowed. -
Constructing witches and spells: Speech acts and activity types in Early Modern England
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsIn this paper, we highlight the centrality of verbs relating to verbal activities in witchcraft narratives in the Early Modern English period, and focus on speech act verbs used to refer to witches' curses -
Witchcraft and Family: What Can Witchcraft Documents Tell Us About Early Modern Scottish Family Life?
Posted on October 15, 2012 | No CommentsA wide range of document-types survive for the early modern period. But random survival rates of potentially detailed docu- ments coupled with their often significant lack of detail about women and the lower orders means that at this stage we do not know even the very basics about family life, let alone people’s subjective thoughts and experiences of family. -
To Converse with the Devil? Speech, Sexuality, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland
Posted on October 15, 2012 | No CommentsIn both of the above cases, the women involved were accused of witchcraft as a consequence of their wilful and disorderly speech; yet, in the course of the witch trial, they were also accused and convicted of participating in an unnatural sexual relationship with the devil. -
The Medical Diagnosis of Demonic Possession in an Early Modern English
Posted on September 6, 2012 | No CommentsIn the families of the English gentry where the majority of the documented cases of demonic possession occurred, doctors played a significant role in interpreting strange and unusual illnesses. It was considered important to first rule out the possibility of natural causation when a supernatural affliction was suspected, and physicians were regarded as crucial in making the distinction. -
The Duke’s Devil and Doctor Lambe’s Darling: A Case Study of the Male Witch in Early Modern England
Posted on August 28, 2012 | No CommentsDuring the early modern period in England changing economic patterns, religious reforms, and social relationships altered gender roles. While the role of women in English society has been well documented by scholars of the early modern period, there are few substantial studies of masculinity for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. -
English Reformation and Irish Witches: The Effects of Confessionalisation in Suppressing Witchraft Accusations in Early Modern Ireland
Posted on August 28, 2012 | No CommentsIndeed, Ireland stands out among the countries of early Modern Europe as having very few recorded witchcraft trials and no actual witch hunts. In point offact, there was no actual statute in Ireland criminalizing witchcraft until 1586.3 Why was Ireland spared this plague of internal suspicion that took the lives of nearly 50,000 women and men in the rest of Europe? -
Anne Askew and Margaret Fell: Religious Women in Prison And Technologies of the Self
Posted on August 26, 2012 | No CommentsBoth Anne Askew (1521-1546) and Margaret Fell (1614-1702) were imprisoned and wrote significant writings in jail. In prison Askew wrote The First Examination (1546) and The Latter Examination (1547); Fell wrote Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed by the Scriptures (1666). The two Protestants’ imprisonment indicates not only their struggle for freedom of their Protestant belief but also the government’s arbitrary exercise of institutional power over non-conforming women. -
John Prestall: A Complex Relationship with the Elizabethan Regime.
Posted on August 25, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis is the biography of John Prestall, a gentleman from Elizabethan England. However as Norden‘s barbed prose suggest, a gentleman in social rank only. He spent his life egotistically peddling his magical abilities to members of Elizabeth I‘s Court, and conspiring to replace Elizabeth with those disaffected by her Protestant rule. John Prestall‘s life weaves through the perverse and often baffling political underworld that existed on the penumbra of the salubrious Elizabethan Court. -
An examination of interpretations of ghosts from the reformation to the close of the Seventeenth Century
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsAn examination of interpretations of ghosts from the reformation to the close of the Seventeenth Century. -
Witchcraft, Politics and Memory in Seventeenth-Century England
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsBodenham’s fate was shared by several hundred others in early modern England, all of whom became trapped at a deadly intersection of circumstance. It is still sometimes assumed that ‘villagers were constantly engaged in contending with, or discussing, witches’, and that popular suspicions and grievances translated simply into prosecutions. -
Staging Executions: The Theater of Punishment in Early Modern England
Posted on July 6, 2012 | No CommentsIn 1571, the first permanent structure for public hangings was constructed at Tyburn. Attending public hangings at “Tyburn tree,” as well as other forms of public punishment was a popular pastime in Elizabethan and Stuart England. Events we would now call “entertainment” in early modern England were fairly limited. -
‘Witchcraft is a rife and common sinne in these our daies’: The Powers of Witches in English Demonologies, 1580-1620
Posted on June 25, 2012 | No CommentsI contend that a detailed textual analysis of these works displays the complexity of early modern witchcraft beliefs, as significant divergences among these authors‟ arguments demonstrate that it is impossible to identify a single, “typical” English demonology, or to conclude that “elite” ideas about early modern witchcraft were homogeneous and hegemonic. -
“Now is hell landed here upon the earth”: Renaissance Poverty and Witchcraft in Thomas Middleton’s The Black Book
Posted on June 13, 2012 | No CommentsIn 1604, two editions of Thomas Middleton’s prose pamphlet The Black Book appeared. Ostensibly a sequel toThomas Nashe’s Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil (1592), The Black Book presents Lucifer’s response to Pierce Penniless’s “penetrable petition.” -
Witches, Wives and Mothers: witchcraft persecution and women’s confessions in seventeenth-century England
Posted on May 23, 2012 | No CommentsMany problems arise in using documents relating to witchcraft trials in general and these confessions in particular as source material. We have no records left directly by the women themselves. -
Seeking the Supernatural: The Exorcisms of John Darrell and the Formation of an Orthodox Identity in Early Modern England
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis examines the questions raised by Darrell‘s exorcisms and the ways in which they were shaped by relations of power. I hope that it will shed new light on the ways in which people formed their religious and ideological identities in this pivotal period in English history. -
Warning, Familiarity and Ridicule: Tracing the Theatrical Representation of the Witch in Early Modern England
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No CommentsThe image of the witch and the vehicle of the theatre seem to be a natural fit. The spectacle inherent in the supernatural aspects of the witch provided a wealth of vivid opportunities for the employing the latest in scenic and technical advances and for experimenting with the possibilities for new special effects. -
The Debate over the Corporeality of Demons in England, c. 1670-1700
Posted on January 6, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis explores a debate which occurred in England during the late seventeenth century. The debate was over whether demons were corporeal or incorporeal. Believers in witchcraft claimed that witches provided proof of demons and those demons were incorporeal substances that could affect the temporal world. -
The Ghost in Early Modern Protestant Culture: Shifting perceptions of the afterlife, 1450-1700
Posted on October 25, 2011 | No CommentsThe Ghost in Early Modern Protestant Culture:Shifting perceptions of the afterlife, 1450-1700 McKeever, Amanda Jane PhD Thesis, Philosophy, University of Sussex, September 27, (2010) Abstract My thesis seeks to address... -
Three early modern magic rituals to spoil witches
Posted on August 27, 2011 | No CommentsThree early modern magic rituals to spoil witches By Frank Klaasen Opuscula, Vol.1 No.1 (2011) Introduction: Pre-modern learned magic practitioners and the less educated cunning-folk who began to take up... -
Witchcraft, flight and the early modern English stage
Posted on March 16, 2010 | No CommentsWitchcraft, flight and the early modern English stage Booth, Roy Early Modern Literary Studies 13.1 (May, 2007) Abstract This is a discussion of something that never happened, in relation to... -
“The Legend of the Bischop of St. Androis Lyfe” and the Survival of Scottish Poetry
Posted on March 8, 2010 | No Comments"The Legend of the Bischop of St. Androis Lyfe" and the Survival of Scottish Poetry Parkinson, David J. Early Modern Literary Studies 9.1 (May 2003) Abstract Their favoured manner readily...