Description
Book SynopsisIn this study, Diane Purkiss investigates the diverse interpretations and meanings attributed to the figure of the witch. The areas she considers include Canonical literature, visual arts, fairy tales, folklore, real-life witch stories, pornography and sado-masochism, film, and the stage.
Trade Review'Diane Purkiss ... insists on taking witches seriously. Her refusal to write witch-believers off as unenlightened has produced some richly intelligent meditations on their -- and our -- world.' - The Observer
'An invigorating and challenging book ... sets many hares running.' - The Times Higher Education Supplement
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Part 1 The Histories of Witchcraft; Chapter 1 A Holocaust of One’s Own; Chapter 2 At Play in the Fields of the Past; Chapter 3 The Witch in the Hands of Historians; Part 2 Early Modern Women’s Stories of Witchcraft; Chapter 4 The House, the Body, the Child; Chapter 5 No Limit; Chapter 6 Self-Fashioning by Women; Part 3 Witches on Stage; Chapter 7 Elizabethan Stagings; Chapter 8 The All-Singing, All-Dancing Plays of The Jacobean Witch-Vogue; Chapter 9 Testimony and Truth; Chapter 10 The Witch on the Margins of ‘race’; Conclusion;
