Telling Stories: Witchcraft And Scapegoating in Chinese History (SINICA LEIDENSIA) - Hardcover

Ter Haar, Barend

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9004148442 ISBN 13: 9789004148444

Publisher: Brill Academic Pub, 2005

Synopsis

This book analyzes the role of oral stories in Chinese witch-hunts. Successive chapters deal with the implications of Chinese versions of the Little Red Riding Hood story; the use of parts of the adult human body, children and foetuses, to draw out their life-force; attacks by mysterious creatures, causing open wounds, suffocation, the loss of hair and the like; the presence of a Drought Demon in the corpses of recently deceased women; and finally the emperor forcibly recruiting unmarried women for his harem. Of interest to historians and anthropologists working on oral traditions, folklore and witch-hunts (also from a comparative perspective), but also to those working on anti-Christian movements and the intersection of popular fears and political history in China.

About this title

About the Author

Barend J. ter Haar, Doctorate (1990) in the Humanities, Leiden University, is Professor of Chinese History at Leiden. He published on Chinese temple cults, lay religious movements, violence, minorities, including The Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads: Creating an Identity (Brill, 1998).

About this edition

• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 9004148442
• ISBN 13: 9789004148444
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 378