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

Clark, Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198208081 ISBN 13: 9780198208082

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 1999

Synopsis

This is a work of fundamental importance for our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Europe. Stuart Clark offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals based on their publications in the field of demonology, and shows how these beliefs fitted rationally with many other views current in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries.

Professor Clark is the first to explore the appeal of demonology to early modern intellectuals by looking at the books they published on the subject during this period. After examining the linguistic foundations of their writings, the author shows how the writers' ideas about witchcraft (and about magic) complemented their other intellectual commitments--in particular, their conceptions of nature, history, religion, and politics. The result is much more than a history of demonology. It is a survey of wider intellectual and ideological purposes, and underlines just how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.

About this title

Review

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. (Richard M Golden, Religious Studies Review, Vol 27, No 2, April 2001)

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 (Richard M Golden, Religious Studies Review, Vol 27, No 2, April 2001)

Clarke is showing something of a break with the historiographical trends which have prevailed in witchcraft studies over the last twenty years. (J.A. Sharpe, Renaissance Studies Vol.14, No.3.)

This is a subtle exposition, informed but not distorted by an awareness of linguistic theory. J.A. Sharpe, Renaissance Studies Vol.14, No.3.

a formidable intellectual achievement ... it is doubtful if any current witchcraft scholar could equal the breadth of Clark's acquaintance with both works of demonology and more recent publications. He displays deep erudition with a light touch: the book, for all its length and the profundity of its scholarship, is a pleasure to read. (J.A. Sharpe, Renaissance Studies Vol.14, No.3.)

a rich and exciting exposition of a belief system. (J.A. Sharpe, Renaissance Studies Vol.14, No.3.)

Anybody who still believes that witchcraft was a marginal or unimportant aspect of European history should spend a weekend reading this book. They will emerge from the exercise with a clearer notion of what first rate intellectual history is like. (J.A. Sharpe, Renaissance Studies Vol.14, No.3.)

deeply considered and weighty arguments based on dauntingly wide reading. (Ian Maclean, Stud. Hist.Phil.Sci. Vol.31, No.2.)

this is an ambitious and thematically broad book which constitutes a formidable intellectual achivement. (J.A. Sharpe, Renaissance Studies, Vol.14, No.2,)

Clarke is showing something of a break with the historiographical trends which have prevailed in witchcraft studies over the last twenty years. (J.A. Sharpe, Renaissance Studies, Vol.14, No.2,)

About the Author

Stuart Clark is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Swansea.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0198208081
• ISBN 13: 9780198208082
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 845