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Men - as accused witches, witch-hunters, werewolves and the demonically possessed - are the focus of analysis in this collection of essays by leading scholars of early modern European witchcraft. The gendering of witch persecution and witchcraft belief is explored through original case-studies from England, Scotland, Italy, Germany and France.
List of contents
List of Figures and Tables Preface Series Forward Notes on Contributors Not the 'Usual Suspects'? Male Witches, Witchcraft, and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe; A.Rowlands Male Witches in the Duchy of Lorraine; R.Briggs Men as Accused Witches in the Holy Roman Empire; R.Schulte Witch-Finders, Witch-Hunters or Kings of the Sabbath? The Prominent Role of Men in the Mass Persecutions of the Rhine-Meuse Area (16th-17th Centuries); R.Voltmer Why Some Men and Not Others? The Male Witches of Eichstätt; J.Durrant Giandomenico Fei, the Only Male Witch. A Tuscan or an Italian Anomaly? O.Di Simplicio Men and the Witch-Hunt in Scotland; J.Goodare Masculinity and Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century England; M.Gaskill The Werewolf, the Witch, and the Warlock: Aspects of Gender in the Early Modern Period; W.de Blécourt Possession and the Sexes; S.Ferber Index
About the author
WILLEM DE BLÉCOURT Honorary Research Fellow, the Huizinga Institute and the Meertens Institute, The Netherlands
ROBIN BRIGGS Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, UK
OSCAR DI SIMPLICIO former Professor of Modern History, the University of Florence, Italy
JONATHAN DURRANT Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, the University of Glamorgan, UK
SARAH FERBER Senior Lecturer in History, the University of Queensland, Australia.
MALCOLM GASKILL Reader in Early Modern History, the University of East Anglia, UK
JULIAN GOODARE Reader in Scottish History, the University of Edinburgh, UK
ALISON ROWLANDS Senior Lecturer in European History, the University of Essex, UK
ROLF SCHULTE Teaching Fellow, the University of Kiel, Germany
RITA VOLTMER Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Pre-Modern History, the University of Trier, Germany
Summary
Men – as accused witches, witch-hunters, werewolves and the demonically possessed – are the focus of analysis in this collection of essays by leading scholars of early modern European witchcraft. The gendering of witch persecution and witchcraft belief is explored through original case-studies from England, Scotland, Italy, Germany and France.
Additional text
'There are two popular modern conceptions about the witchcraft trials of the early modern period, the idea that they were a sort of gender war launched by patriarchal males against women, and an older idea that they represented the hangover from medieval superstition. This book explicitly challenges the former, and serves to remind us even more clearly how false the latter is.' - The Magonia Review of Books
Report
'There are two popular modern conceptions about the witchcraft trials of the early modern period, the idea that they were a sort of gender war launched by patriarchal males against women, and an older idea that they represented the hangover from medieval superstition. This book explicitly challenges the former, and serves to remind us even more clearly how false the latter is.' - The Magonia Review of Books
