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Desperate Magic

By Valerie Kivelson

Desperate Magic

By Valerie Kivelson

0 - Default Title
Description
In early modern Europe, thousands of women were burned as witches during the period of the witch hunts. From the court records of seventeenth-century Russia a very different picture emerges. The great majority of those accused of witchcraft were men. Broadly comparative, Desperate Magic by Valerie Kivelson is the first sustained study of seventeenth-century Russian witch trials. The book uses trial evidence to illuminate some of the central puzzles of Muscovite history. The routine use of torture in extracting and shaping confessions raises methodological and moral questions with continuing resonance in the world today. A major finding of this book is that witchcraft was not a marginal practice in early modern Russia. It was practiced by all ranks of society, from serf to tsaritsa at the same time that it was severely condemned and punished. Testimony from these cases lets us see into the emotional lives of illiterate women and men of the Russian past. This analysis shows how the State and relations of power were inscribed into everyday practices, and magic was used as a defense by ordinary people scrambling to survive in a fiercely inequitable world.
Product details
Number of Pages:
482
Release Date:
2020-12-01
Publication Date:
2020-12-01
Publisher:
Academic Studies Press
Languages:
Original: Russian
ISBN10:
1644694506
ISBN13:
9781644694503
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
843 g
Height:
157 cm
Width:
235 cm
Thickness:
30 cm
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