Possessed
Subtitle: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Published: March 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780875802732
Subjects: Cultural studies; European history: c 1750 to c 1900; European history: from c 1900 -; Satanism & demonology; Witchcraft; Psychology; Social conditions; History - General History; Women's Studies - History; Russia; Europe - Russia & the Former Soviet Union; Witchcraft & Wicca; Reference; Demoniac possession; Women peasants
Description: "Women known as "shriekers" howled, screamed, convulsed, and tore their clothes. Believed by many to be possessed by demons, these central figures in the cultural drama of klikushestvo stirred various reactions among those who encountered them. While peasants and clergymen sheltered the shriekers, others analyzed, diagnosed, and objectified them.

The Russian Orthodox Church played an important role in the drama, for, while moving toward a scientific explanation for the behavior of the klikushi, it was reluctant to abandon the ideas of possession and miraculous exorcism.".

"Possessed is the first book to examine the phenomenon of demon possession in rural Russia. Drawing from a wide range of sources - religious, psychiatric, ethnographic, and literary - Worobec looks at klikushestvo over a broad span of time, focusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when all of Russian society felt the pressure of modernization."--BOOK JACKET.