Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe - Softcover

Clark, Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198208081 ISBN 13: 9780198208082

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999

Synopsis

This major work offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, showing how these beliefs fitted rationally with other beliefs of the period and how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.

About this title

About the Author

Stuart Clark is at University of Swansea.

Review

"From the 15th through the beginning of the 18th century, many intellectuals expounded and defended views of the world and of human behavior to which witches were central. This volume presents a magnificent attempt to understand this demonological thinking and the intellectual activity of which it was a part."--CHOICE

"A short review cannot do justice to the richness or the subtlety of this volume. One of the most striking things about it is Clark's willingness to treat the subject with proper seriousness...The book...ought to be in the hands of as many readers as possible."--Sixteenth Century Journal

"Nothing in [Clark's] earlier writings would have led one to expect that he was meditating a work so powerful in conception and so massive in scale as he has now produced. His Thinking with Demons, which runs to over eight hundred large, closely printed, and heavily annotated pages, suddenly places him at the forefront of cultural history...For anyone interested in what we can hope to learn about ourselves from past systems of thought, this is a genuinely important book."--Common Knowledge

"Carefully researched and documented, supported by a mountainous bibliography, this is a book that should be carefully read, and reread, by every historian of the early modern period."--Seventeenth-Century News

"Clark's mastery of the sources, his effective use of linguistic theory, and the originality of his interpretations make the reading of this massive, complex, and skillfully constructed book an immensely rewarding experience...[T]he most comprehensive and thorough study of early modern witchcraft beliefs in any language."--Albion

"This is intellectual history at its best. Clark reads and understands the demonological writings between the late fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries on their own terms...This massive and rich book is brimming with suggestions for future researchers. Clark's bibliography is itself a contribution to witchcraft scholarship. Thinking With Demons will become a classic."--Religious Studies Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0198208081
• ISBN 13: 9780198208082
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 850