Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Mar 14, 2016
Language: eng
Format: hardcover
Number of pages: 384
ISBN-13: 9780198717720
Description: A wide-ranging overview of the place of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the broader culture of early modern England. Based on a mass of new evidence extracted from a range of archives, both local and national, it seeks to relate the rise and decline of belief in witchcraft, alongside the legal prosecution of witches, to the wider political culture of the period. Building on the seminal work of scholars such as Stuart Clark, Ian Bostridge, and Jonathan Barry, it demonstrates how learned discussion of witchcraft, as well as the trials of those suspected of the crime, were shaped by religious and political imperatives in that period.