123422 SE Literary & Cultural Studies Seminar / BA Paper / MA British/Irish/New English (2013S)

Contents: The seminar will focus on the perennial and cross-cultural phenomenon of "witchcraft" and witch-persecution and its historical manifestation in England and Scotland between the late 16th and the 18th centuries. In two introductory units a brief outline of the history of the European witch-craze from around 1500 to 1750 will be given, and the controversial role of King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) in the Scottish witch-trials of the late 1590s will be given and his obsession with witchcraft demonstrated on the basis of his notorious book "Daemonology" (1597). Some recent theories and critical interdisciplinary approaches to the universal phenomenon of witchcraft will likewise be considered. This epistemological framework is intended to help students in contextualizing the texts under discussion and to enable them to discern features of witchcraft and the central themes and motifs inherent in literary constructions of witches and witchcraft. The works selected for discussion in class include Rowley, Dekker and Ford's tragedy "The Witch of Edmonton" (1621), which is based on the historical witch-trial and execution of Elizabeth Sawyer (1621), Robert Burns' ballad Tam O'Shanter, several short stories of the 19th and 20th centuries, and a recent historical witchcraft play "The Last Witch" (2009) by the Scottish dramatist Rona Munro, dealing with the execution of Janet Horne, the last woman to be executed for witchcraft in Scotland in 1727.