Description
Book SynopsisIn Detestable and Wicked Arts, Paul B. Moyer places early New England''s battle against black magic in a transatlantic perspective. Moyer provides an accessible and comprehensive examination of witch prosecutions in the Puritan colonies that discusses how their English inhabitants understood the crime of witchcraft, why some people ran a greater risk of being accused of occult misdeeds, and how gender intersected with witch-hunting.
Focusing on witchcraft cases in New England between roughly 1640 and 1670, Detestable and Wicked Arts highlights ties between witch-hunting in the New and Old Worlds. Informed by studies on witchcraft in early modern Europe, Moyer presents a useful synthesis of scholarship on occult crime in New England and makes new and valuable contributions to the field.
Trade ReviewDeeply researched, crisply composed, and highly engaging, this is arguably the best introductory survey available on witchcraft in the early modern English Atlantic. A work of synthesis and innovative scholarship, it will be of interest to neophytes and experts alike.
* Choice *
The virtue of Paul Moyer's book is that it presents in most readable form the basics of a dense and complex subject: witchcraft beliefs and practices in New England and early modern Europe in the period between 1640 and 1670. A transatlantic analysis of witchcraft activity in this period is essential because New England thinkers were reading and assimilating European ideas and seeing themselves in that light, especially in terms of English cases. Moyer's book is rich in material and well nuanced. The subject as a whole, including all the relevant cases and a variety of interpretive perspectives, has rarely been brought together in a single volume.
* Early American Literature *
Detestable and Wicked Arts is an important and needed contribution to the study of New England witchcraft, as well as to the field of Atlantic studies Moyer's accessible, jargon-free writing style and sophisticated handling of an extraordinary number of primary sources and case studies makes Detestable and Wicked Arts especially suitable for undergraduate and graduate students and nonspecialists
* Journal of American History *
Moyer's study is an extremely well-researched, fully considered, well-structured study of events that are, by their very nature, incoherent and messy.
* The Seventeenth Century *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Devil in New England
1. "Hanged for a Witch": Witch-Hunting in New England before 1670
2. "Being Instigated by the Devil": The Crime of Witchcraft
3. "A Forward, Discontented Frame of Spirit": The New England Witch
4. "The More Women, the More Witches": Gender and Witchcraft
5. "There Was Some Mischief in It": The Social Context of Witchcraft
6. "Very Awful and Amazing": Witch Panics and the Bewitched
7. "According to God's Law": Witch-Hunting as a Judicial Process
Conclusion: The Case of Ann Burt and Witch-Hunting in the English Atlantic
