Witchcraft at Salem

Much has been written about the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692, and much has been misunderstood. "The more I studied the documents of what actually took place in the community, "writes Chadwich Hansen, "the more I found myself in opposition to the traditional interpretations. It seems to me that a serious consideration was in order." He argues, for instance, that witchcraft was actually practiced in seventeenth-century New England, as it was in Europe at the same time. Moreover, the behavior of the afflicted persons was not fraudulent, as some have claimed, but pathological: these people were hysterics in the clinical rather than the popular sense of the term. Further still, the clergy did not inspire or take advantage of the witch hunts as has been charged; on the contrary, they were among the chief opponents of the "mass hysteria." Library Journal called this book, ..".The most important scholarly contribution to the literature of witchcraft to appear in many years."

Author: Chadwick Hansen
Publisher: Braziller Books
Published: 08/17/1985
Pages: 282
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.11lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.75d
ISBN13: 9780807616123
ISBN10: 0807616125
BISAC Categories:
- History | United States | Colonial Period
- History | United States | State & Local | New England
- Body, Mind & Spirit | Occultism

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