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Abstract:
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Bringing together leading historians, anthropologists, and religionists, this volume examines the unbridled passions of witchcraft from the Middle Ages to the present. Witchcraft is an intensely emotional crime, rooted in the belief that envy and spite can cause illness or even death. Witch-trials in turn are emotionally driven by the grief of alleged victims and by the fears of magistrates and demonologists. With examples ranging from Russia to New England, Germany to Cameroon, chapters cover the representation of emotional witches in demonology and art; the gendering of witchcraft as female envy or male rage; witchcraft as a form of bullying and witchcraft accusation as a form of therapy; love magic and demon-lovers; and the affective memorialization of the “Burning Times” among contemporary Pagan feminists. Wide-ranging and methodologically diverse, the book is appropriate for scholars of witchcraft, gender, and emotions; for graduate or undergraduate courses, and for the interested general reader
1. ‘Unbridled Passion’: Witchcraft in the History of Emotion by Michael Ostling and Laura Kounine -- Part I: In Representation -- 2. Fear and Devotion in the Writings of Heinrich Institoris by Tamar Herzig -- 3. Satanic Fury: Depictions of the Devil’s Rage in Nicolas Remy’s Daemonolatria by Laura Kounine -- 4. The Cruelty of Witchcraft: the Drawings of Jacques de Gheyn the Younger by Charles Zika -- 5. Tyrannical Beasts: Male Witchcraft in Early Modern English Culture by E. J. Kent -- Part II -- 6. The Witch in the Courtroom: Torture and the Representations of Emotion by Rita Voltmer -- 7. ‘So they will love me and pine for me’: Intimacy and Distance in Early Modern Russian Magic by Valerie Kivelson -- 8. Emotion and Affect in Lorraine Witchcraft Trials by Robin Briggs -- 9. Speaking of Love in the Polish Witch-Trials by Michael Ostling -- 10. Over-Familiar Spirits: The Bonds between English Witches and their Devils byCharlotte-Rose Millar -- Part III -- 11. Bullying, the Neurobiology of Emotional Aggression, and the Experience of Witchcraft by Edward Bever -- 12. Witchcraft and the Dangers of Intimacy: Africa and Europe by Peter Geschiere -- 13. Psychotic Reactions? Witchcraft, The Devil and Mental Illness by Sarah Ferber -- Part IV -- 14. In Memorium Maleficarum: Feminist and Pagan Mobilizations of the Burning Times by Laurel Zwissler -- 15. Afterword: Passions in Perspective by Malcolm Gaskill
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