| Author | : Paola Zambelli |
| Publisher | : BRILL |
| Total Pages | : 293 |
| Release | : 2007 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9004160981 |
The ideas of philosophers (Ficino, Pico, Della Porta, Bruno) on magic interfered with popular alternative and witchcraft rites. This book focuses on "wandering scholastics" (Trithemius, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Bruno) and will be a stimulating read for all those interested in Renaissance mentality.
| Author | : Mark A. Waddell |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 231 |
| Release | : 2021-01-28 |
| Genre | : Technology & Engineering |
| ISBN | : 1108591167 |
From the recovery of ancient ritual magic at the height of the Renaissance to the ignominious demise of alchemy at the dawn of the Enlightenment, Mark A. Waddell explores the rich and complex ways that premodern people made sense of their world. He describes a time when witches flew through the dark of night to feast on the flesh of unbaptized infants, magicians conversed with angels or struck pacts with demons, and astrologers cast the horoscopes of royalty. Ground-breaking discoveries changed the way that people understood the universe while, in laboratories and coffee houses, philosophers discussed how to reconcile the scientific method with the veneration of God. This engaging, illustrated new study introduces readers to the vibrant history behind the emergence of the modern world.
| Author | : Kent Cartwright |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 208 |
| Release | : 2021-11-11 |
| Genre | : Literary Criticism |
| ISBN | : 019263965X |
Shakespeare and the Comedy of Enchantment argues that enchantment constitutes a key emotional and intellectual dimension of Shakespeare's comedies. It thus makes a new claim about the rejuvenating value of comedy for individuals and society. Shakespeare's comedies orchestrate ongoing encounters between the rational and the mysterious, between doubt and fascination, with feelings moved by elements of enchantment that also seem a little ridiculous. In such a drama, lines of causality become complex, and even satisfying endings leave certain matters incomplete and contingent—openings for scrutiny and thought. In addressing enchantment, the book takes exception to the modernist vision of a deterministic 'disenchanted' world. As Shakespeare's action advances, comic mysteries accrue—uncanny coincidences; magical sympathies; inexplicable repetitions; psychic influences; and puzzlements about the meaning of events—all of whose numinous effects linger ambiguously after reason has apparently answered the play's questions. Separate chapters explore the devices, tropes, and motifs of enchantment: magical clowns who alter the action through stop-time interludes; structural repetitions that suggest mysteriously converging, even opaquely providential destinies; locales that oppose magical and protean forces to regulatory and quotidian values; desires, thoughts, and utterances that 'manifest' comically monstrous events; characters who return from the dead, facilitated by the desires of the living; play-endings crossed by harmony and dissonance, with moments of wonder that make possible the mysterious action of forgiveness. Wonder and wondering in Shakespeare's and other comedies, it emerges, become the conditions for new possibilities. Chapters refer extensively to early modern history, Renaissance and modern theories of comedy, treatises on magical science, and contemporaneous Italian and Tudor comedy.
| Author | : Daniel Bellingradt |
| Publisher | : Springer |
| Total Pages | : 168 |
| Release | : 2017-08-31 |
| Genre | : Literary Criticism |
| ISBN | : 3319595253 |
This book presents the story of a unique collection of 140 manuscripts of ‘learned magic’ that was sold for a fantastic sum within the clandestine channels of the German book trade in the early eighteenth century. The book will interpret this collection from two angles – as an artefact of the early modern book market as well as the longue-durée tradition of Western learned magic –, thus taking a new stance towards scribal texts that are often regarded as eccentric, peripheral, or marginal. The study is structured by the apparent exceptionality, scarcity, and illegality of the collection, and provides chapters on clandestine activities in European book markets, questions of censorship regimes and efficiency, the use of manuscripts in an age of print, and the history of learned magic in early modern Europe. As the collection has survived till this day in Leipzig University Library, the book provides a critical edition of the 1710 selling catalogue, which includes a brief content analysis of all extant manuscripts. The study will be of interest to scholars and students from a variety of fields, such as early modern book history, the history of magic, cultural history, the sociology of religion, or the study of Western esotericism.
| Author | : Eugene D. Dukes |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 336 |
| Release | : 1996 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : |
This book looks at explanations of the black arts as they existed during early medieval centuries in Western Europe. It objectively examines the historical development of magic and witchcraft and emphasizes the reality of these black arts. Stressing the historiographical significance of the modern literature of the occult, this book provides a solid display of the leading role of rationalism in modern literature. The author employs studies in anthropology and examinations of writings of medieval encyclopedists, code of pagan law, and the Church Fathers from the fourth to the eighth centuries. By remaining objective and employing such historiographical and theological details to his work, Duke creates a high quality and unique study which supports refutations of rationalist historians who see middle-age witchcraft as a delusion. His book will appeal to students and scholars of medieval history, as well as anyone interested in the black arts. Contents: Abbreviations; Acknowledgments; MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY; Introduction; The Modern Literature of Witchcraft; The Roman and Christian Background; The Western Fathers and Magic and Witchcraft A.D. 300-450; St. Augustine on Magic and Miracles; Magic, Miracles and the Ecclesiastical Witchcraft; Heirs of the Latin Fathers; Conclusions; Bibliography; Index.
| Author | : James M. Van der Laan |
| Publisher | : Camden House |
| Total Pages | : 414 |
| Release | : 2013 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1571135529 |
New essays revealing the enduring significance of the story made famous in the 1587 Faustbuch and providing insights into the forces that gave the sixteenth century its distinct character. The Reformation and Renaissance, though segregated into distinct disciplines today, interacted and clashed intimately in Faust, the great figure that attained European prominence in the anonymous 1587 Historia von D. Johann Fausten. The original Faust behind Goethe's great drama embodies a remote culture. In his century, Faust evolved from an obscure cipher to a universal symbol. The age explored here as "the Faustian century" invested the Faustbuch and its theme with a symbolic significance still of exceptional relevance today. The new essays in this volume complement one another, providing insights into the tensions and forces that gave the century its distinctcharacter. Several essays seek Faust's prototypes. Others elaborate the symbolic function of his figure and discern the resonance of his tale in conflicting allegiances. This volume focuses on the intersection of historical accounts and literary imaginings, on shared aspects of the work and its times, on concerns with obedience and transgression, obsessions with the devil and curiosity about magic, and quandaries created by shifting religious and worldlyauthorities. Contributors: Marguerite de Huszar Allen, Kresten Thue Andersen, Frank Baron, Günther Bonheim, Albrecht Classen, Urs Leo Gantenbein, Karl S. Guthke, Michael Keefer, Paul Ernst Meyer, J. M. van der Laan, Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly, Andrew Weeks. J. M. van der Laan is Professor of German and Andrew Weeks is Professor of German and Comparative Literature, both at Illinois State University.
| Author | : Liana Saif |
| Publisher | : Springer |
| Total Pages | : 284 |
| Release | : 2016-04-29 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1137399473 |
Investigating the impact of Arabic medieval astrological and magical theories on early modern occult philosophy, this book argues that they provided a naturalistic explanation of astral influences and magical efficacy based on Aristotelian notions of causality.
| Author | : Lyke de Vries |
| Publisher | : BRILL |
| Total Pages | : 444 |
| Release | : 2021-12-13 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9004249397 |
At the centre of the Rosicrucian manifestos was a call for ‘general reformation’. In Reformation, Revolution, Renovation, the first book-length study of this topic, Lyke de Vries demonstrates the unique position of the Rosicrucian call for reform in the transformative context of the early seventeenth century. The manifestos, commonly interpreted as either Lutheran or esoteric, are here portrayed as revolutionary mission statements which broke dramatically with Luther’s reform ideals. Their call for reform instead resembles a variety of late medieval and early modern dissenting traditions as well as the heterodox movement of Paracelsianism. Emphasising the universal character of the Rosicrucian proposal for change, this new genealogy of the core idea sheds fresh light on the vexed question of the manifestos’ authorship and helps explain their tumultuous reception by both those who welcomed and those who deplored them.
| Author | : Sylvia Brown |
| Publisher | : BRILL |
| Total Pages | : 339 |
| Release | : 2007-11-30 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9047422740 |
This collection of twelve new essays explores the role of women and gender in a broad range of ‘radical’ religious movements of the post-Reformation. Organized into three themed divisions, the first examines the activism of female Quakers in their public performances as preachers and petitioners, in their global travels, and in their domestic lives; the second examines early modern prophetesses and their radical revisions of scripture, gender, body, and voice; and the third concerns women who, in diverse ways, crossed boundaries, including the confessional boundaries of Europe. A strength of this volume is its comparative re-examination of the term ‘radical’. German Anabaptists are discussed alongside unorthodox nuns with the aim of understanding how gender factors into innovative and oppositional religion. Contributors include: Sarah Apetrei, Naomi Baker, Sylvia Brown, Ruth Connolly, Pamela Ellis, José Manuel González, Julie Hirst, Stephen A. Kent, Marion Kobelt-Groch, Bo Karen Lee, Kirilka Stavreva, and Sheila Wright.
