Résumé
Résumé de Histoires de sorcières
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love social history, folklore and Victorian writing, and anyone who wants to understand how panic and law combined to turn neighbours into accusers.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Witch Stories is a book of historical essays by the Victorian writer Eliza Lynn Linton, first published in the 1860s. She gathers accounts of witch belief, witch trials and the persecution of the accused in Britain, and she writes as a journalist who wants her readers to see how ordinary people came to hunt their neighbours.
You get a clear picture of how the fear worked: the old folk beliefs, the laws, the court cases and the suffering of those named. Linton writes with a nineteenth century eye, sceptical and often indignant. Let us begin with where the fear came from.
Dans ce résumé
- 1The fear grew from old beliefsFree
- 2Law turned suspicion into execution
- 3Accusers, hunters and the accused
- 4A Victorian looks back
Point clé 1 sur 4
The fear grew from old beliefs
Linton begins with the idea that belief in witches did not appear from nowhere. Across Britain, villagers had long held that some people could harm crops, cattle and children by secret means. Cunning folk, healers and wise women were trusted and feared at the same time. A person who could cure an illness might also be blamed for causing one.
Church teaching gave these village fears a larger frame. Learned writers described witches as servants of the Devil, bound to him by a pact. That turned a quarrel between neighbours into a crime against God. Linton shows how easily the two streams joined, the rural belief in spells and the scholarly belief in a Satanic plot.
For a reader today, the point is that persecution needs both a popular fear and an official explanation. Neither alone would have filled the courts. Linton asks you to notice how reasonable the accusers thought they were, because they were acting on what their world taught them.
That’s 1 of 4 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Histoires de sorcières
What is Witch Stories by E. Lynn Linton about?
It is a collection of historical essays on witchcraft in Britain. Linton covers the old beliefs, the laws against witches, the trials and the suffering of those accused, writing for a general Victorian audience.
When was Witch Stories written?
It was written and first published in the 1860s by Eliza Lynn Linton, a Victorian journalist and novelist. It is nonfiction, drawn from older trial accounts and pamphlets rather than invented tales.
Is Witch Stories a true account?
Yes, it is a work of history and not fiction. Linton retells real trials and beliefs, though she writes in a lively Victorian style, and modern historians have since refined many details.
Is Witch Stories hard to read?
It is told in an engaging, story-like way and does not require any background in history.
Who was Matthew Hopkins?
Matthew Hopkins was an English witch finder who worked in East Anglia in the 1640s. He took payment for hunting suspected witches, and his methods led to many trials and executions during the Civil War years.