Authors: Ian Bostridge
ISBN-13: 9780198206538, ISBN-10: 0198206534
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: April 1997
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Ian Bostridge is a young British tenor making his mark on the opera and concert stage. He sings full-time, but is also writing a book, provisionally entitled Being a Singer, to be published by Methuen in 1998.
This is an original and important study of the significance of witchcraft in English public life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In his lively account, Bostridge explores contemporary beliefs about witchcraft and shows how it remained a serious concern across the spectrum of political opinion. He concludes that its gradual descent into polite ridicule had as much to do with political developments as with the birth of reason.
List of Illustrations | ||
Abbreviations | ||
Introduction | 1 | |
1 | Contract | 6 |
2 | Hobbes | 38 |
3 | Witchcraft Restored | 53 |
4 | Pandaemonium | 85 |
5 | Party-Causes | 108 |
6 | The Last Debate? | 139 |
7 | Afterlife | 155 |
8 | Repeal | 180 |
9 | Witchcraft Abroad | 203 |
Conclusion | 233 | |
Bibliography | 245 | |
Index | 265 |