Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits in the Early Modern Period
Editors: Brock, Michelle D., Raiswell, Richard, Winter, David (Eds.)
Free Preview- Explores the theory and practice of knowing demons and spirits, including angels and fairies, in the early modern era
- Investigates the discursive and experiential frameworks which allowed people to recognize and understand preternatural beings
- Asseses the cultural, geographical and chronological contexts of the evolution of understandings of spirits and demons
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- About this book
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This book explores the manifold ways of knowing—and knowing about— preternatural beings such as demons, angels, fairies, and other spirits that inhabited and were believed to act in early modern European worlds. Its contributors examine how people across the social spectrum assayed the various types of spiritual entities that they believed dwelled invisibly but meaningfully in the spaces just beyond (and occasionally within) the limits of human perception. Collectively, the volume demonstrates that an awareness and understanding of the nature and capabilities of spirits—whether benevolent or malevolent—was fundamental to the knowledge-making practices that characterize the years between ca. 1500 and 1750. This is, therefore, a book about how epistemological and experiential knowledge of spirits persisted and evolved in concert with the wider intellectual changes of the early modern period, such as the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment.
- About the authors
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Michelle D. Brock is Associate Professor of History at Washington and Lee University, USA.
Richard Raiswell is Associate Professor of History at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada.
David R. Winter is Associate Professor of History at Brandon University, Canada.
- Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Theory and Practice in Early Modern Epistemologies of the Preternatural
Pages 3-19
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Knowing the Spirit(s) in the Dutch Radical Reformation: From Physical Perception to Rational Doubt, 1536–1690
Pages 23-54
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Hell and Fairy: The Differentiation of Fairies and Demons Within British Ritual Magic of the Early Modern Period
Pages 55-77
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Preternatural Peasants and the Discourse of Demons: Xenoglossy, Superstition, and Melancholy in Early Modern Spain
Pages 79-104
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Testing for Demonic Possession: Scribonius, Goclenius, and the Lemgo Witchcraft Trial of 1583
Pages 105-122
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits in the Early Modern Period
- Editors
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- Michelle D. Brock
- Richard Raiswell
- David Winter
- Series Title
- Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic
- Copyright
- 2018
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Copyright Holder
- The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
- eBook ISBN
- 978-3-319-75738-4
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-319-75738-4
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-3-319-75737-7
- Softcover ISBN
- 978-3-030-09313-6
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XV, 317
- Number of Illustrations
- 5 b/w illustrations
- Topics
