description | syllabus | discussion questions | links | Essays on Witch Hunting back to David's home page
| Dubious American Ideal:
Gender and Historical Knowledge inThe Crucible |
An essay with four main goals: first, to address the broad question of the historical accuracy of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible; second, to offer modest background materials for understanding women’s experiences of witch hunting; third, to suggest a rereading of The Crucible in light of women’s historical experience; and fourth, to reflect on the ways literature helps construct a knowledge of history inscribed with power. The essay is to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Soundings, but I retain here sections that involve specific connections to other essays or lectures on my site. |
| “Witches Can Do Marvellous
Things”:
Witch Powers as Rhetorical Device in the Texts of Witch Hunters |
An essay that portrays specific language and claims in texts by early modern witch hunters as rhetorical devices. Quite apart from any claim to truth, the assertions of witch hunters sought to establish dispositions, to reorient, to resituate—that is, to create discursive realities with social entailments. As an example of this rhetorical force, the famous charge by Kramer and Sprenger in the Malleus Maleficarum that witches could make "the virile member" seem to disappear is situated in the context of Christian constructions of femininity and disorder. |
| "Witch" and "Woman" in the Discourse of Witch Hunting: Semiotic Reflections | An essay that explores how the discourse about “witches” that emerged in early modern Europe contributes to specific constructions of femininity in Christian traditions. By focusing on the position of “witch” and “woman” relative to other key terms in witch hunting discourse, I show that the hunters’ use of “witch” reshapes and passes on inherited constructions of femininity. “Witch” and “woman” are alternately opposed and identified, in a way that establishes a double meaning of “woman”: submission, naturalness, and piety, on one hand; but latent demonic transgression on the other. I analyze two test cases—one from the beginning of the period of great witch hunts, one from the end—to illustrate consistent discursive patterns. I show that even though the actual prosecutions of women as witches have a distinct historical beginning and ending, they manifest discursive continuities that extend from the time of Christian origins to the present day. I conclude by touching briefly on specific instances where women are represented as witches in contemporary discourse, and I link these to the discourse of the great witch hunts. |