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Magic in Early Modern England
Literature, Politics, and Supernatural Power
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2023
Summary
This book reconsiders the place of magic at the foundations of modernity. Through careful close reading of plays, spell books, philosophical treatises, and witch trial narratives, Andrew Moore shows us that magic was ubiquitous in early modern England. Rather than a “decline of magic,” this study traces a broad cultural fascination with supernatural power. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, poets, philosophers, jurists, and monarchs debated the reality and the morality of magic, and, by extension, the limits of human power. In this way, early modern English writing about magic was closely related to the scientific and political philosophical writing from the period, which was likewise reimagining humanity’s relationship to nature. Moore reads Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan alongside contemporary writing by the notorious witch hunters Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne. He reminds us that Francis Bacon’s scientific works were addressed to King James I, whose own Dæmonologie insists on the reality of witchcraft. The fantastical science fiction of Margaret Cavendish, he argues, must be understood within a tradition that includes works like Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and the peculiar autobiography of criminal astrologer Simon Forman. By considering these disparate works together Moore reveals the centrality of magic to the early modern project.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2023
ISBN-Print
978-1-4985-7551-5
ISBN-Online
978-1-4985-7552-2
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
178
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Acknowledgments No access
The Ubiquity of Magic in Early Modern England No access Pages 1 - 20
Toward a Definition of Early Modern Magic No access Pages 21 - 46
Magic and Materialism No access Pages 47 - 68
Magical Overreach in Robert Greene and Simon Forman No access Pages 69 - 84
Illusions of Power in Doctor Faustus and Francis Bacon No access Pages 85 - 104
Witch Trials and Thomas Hobbes No access Pages 105 - 132
Margaret Cavendish and the Conquest of the Blazing World No access Pages 133 - 150
