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Cursing, Crisis and Customary Knowledge in Early Modern English Townships

Karen O'Brien author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Springer International Publishing AG

Published:2nd Dec '23

Should be back in stock very soon

Cursing, Crisis and Customary Knowledge in Early Modern English Townships cover

This book provides a historical and socio-legal investigation into the prevalence of litigation arising from cursing and interpersonal hostility in the under-explored region of Northwest England during a period of acute socio-economic crisis in the seventeenth century. Contributing to the scholarship of magic and witchcraft, it shows the complex circumstances of the world of healing and harming using customary knowledge such as magic and folk medicine as it is variously presented in the documents of the legal system. While primary sources such as pamphlets have usefully informed numerous witchcraft studies, this book establishes popular belief derived from the depositions, interrogatories and various other manuscripts of the manorial, ecclesiastical and secular courts positioned within a micro historical early modern context.


ISBN: 9783031440441

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

278 pages

1st ed. 2023