Witch Craze by Lyndal Roper
A powerful account of witches, crones, and the societies that make them From the gruesome ogress in Hansel and Gretel to the hags at the sabbath in Faust, the witch has been a powerful figure of the Western imagination. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thousands of women confessed to being witches--of making pacts with the Devil, causing babies to sicken, and killing animals and crops--and were put to death. This book is a gripping account of the pursuit, interrogation, torture, and burning of witches during this period and beyond. Drawing on hundreds of original trial transcripts and other rare sources in four areas of Southern Germany, where most of the witches were executed, Lyndal Roper paints a vivid picture of their lives, families, and tribulations. She also explores the psychology of witch-hunting, explaining why it was mostly older women that were the victims of witch crazes, why they confessed to crimes, and how the depiction of witches in art and literature has influenced the characterization of elderly women in our own culture.
"'This is a major work that pushes the history of witchcraft in new directions and offers remarkable and sometimes startling new insightsLyndal Roper breaks new ground in her remarkable, subtle analysis of the interpersonal relations among those caught up in fantasies of witchcraft.' H. C. Erik Midelfort, author of A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany"
Lyndal Roper is titular CUF in Modern History, Balliol College, University of Oxford and author of The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg and Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780300103359 |
| ISBN 10 | 0300103352 |
| Title | Witch Craze |
| Author | Lyndal Roper |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Yale University Press |
| Year published | 2004-12-11 |
| Number of pages | 352 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |