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A review by brynhammond
Reading Witchcraft by Marion Gibson
4.0
Even the drabbest of historical documents can't be read as if they are a transparent window, a direct look into the real past -- as if there is no writing being done; still less the self-consciously writerly pamphleteers. In this great little book, Gibson turns our eyes to the writerliness of our sources; it's a lesson in how to read them, with the tools of written arts.
I enjoyed her attention to the comic treatments of witchcraft (in pamphlets as on the stage) as not dismissable material but indication of another way Elizabethans and Jacobeans saw witchcraft: even as people were being hanged, witchcraft was also a subject for lampoon and jokes, triviality and frivolity. That's important to keep in mind.
I enjoyed her attention to the comic treatments of witchcraft (in pamphlets as on the stage) as not dismissable material but indication of another way Elizabethans and Jacobeans saw witchcraft: even as people were being hanged, witchcraft was also a subject for lampoon and jokes, triviality and frivolity. That's important to keep in mind.