Cantitate/Preț
Produs

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

Autor Stuart Clark
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 30 ian 1997

Evoluția istoriografiei moderne a marcat o trecere decisivă de la analiza cauzelor sociale ale vânătorii de vrăjitoare către înțelegerea sistemelor de gândire care au făcut aceste fenomene posibile. Thinking with Demons reprezintă piatra de temelie a acestei schimbări de paradigmă, fiind o lucrare de o erudiție remarcabilă ce reevaluează demonologia nu ca pe o superstiție marginală, ci ca pe o componentă centrală a raționalității europene timpurii. Descoperim aici că intelectualii epocii nu operau cu fantezii izolate, ci integrau credințele despre demoni într-un sistem coerent care susținea viziunile lor despre ordinea politică, providența divină și legile naturii.

Reținem rigoarea cu care Stuart Clark analizează bazele lingvistice și logice ale textelor vremii, demonstrând cum „știința” demonologiei era, în fapt, un exercițiu de definire a contrariilor. Această ediție publicată de OUP OXFORD oferă o perspectivă interdisciplinară asupra modului în care autoritatea religioasă și cea seculară s-au folosit de aceste concepte pentru a-și consolida legitimitatea. Cartea acoperă aceeași arie tematică precum Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe de Julian Goodare, dar cu o abordare mult mai profund ancorată în istoria ideilor și în filosofia limbajului, preferând analiza structurilor intelectuale în detrimentul cronologiei proceselor.

În contextul operei autorului, lucrarea se constituie ca fundament teoretic pentru volumele ulterioare, precum Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 5 sau Languages of Witchcraft. Dacă în scrierile sale mai recente despre astronomie, precum Beneath the Night, autorul explorează relația omului cu cosmosul, în acest volum monumental el investighează „întunericul” interior al rațiunii premoderne, oferind un studiu exhaustiv despre cum se definește adevărul în funcție de contextul său istoric.

Citește tot Restrânge

Preț: 72036 lei

Preț vechi: 103691 lei
-31%

Puncte Express: 1081

Carte tipărită la comandă

Livrare economică 29 mai-03 iunie


Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780198200017
ISBN-10: 0198200013
Pagini: 844
Ilustrații: 2 halftones
Dimensiuni: 162 x 243 x 48 mm
Greutate: 1.32 kg
Editura: OUP OXFORD
Colecția OUP Oxford
Locul publicării:Oxford, United Kingdom

De ce să citești această carte

Această lucrare este esențială pentru cercetătorii și studenții la istorie, filosofie sau sociologie care doresc să înțeleagă mecanismele gândirii premoderne. Cititorul câștigă o perspectivă nuanțată asupra modului în care idei aparent iraționale au fost, de fapt, piloni ai stabilității politice și religioase. Este o resursă academică de referință care demonstrează că istoria vrăjitoriei este, în esență, o istorie a modului în care am învățat să gândim lumea.


Despre autor

Stuart Clark este un reputat istoric și scriitor britanic, deținător al unui doctorat în astrofizică și membru al Royal Astronomical Society. Deși este cunoscut publicului larg pentru lucrările sale de popularizare a științei și astronomiei, precum The Sun Kings sau The Book of Mars, contribuția sa în domeniul istoriei culturale este considerată fundamentală. Prin cercetările sale asupra perioadei moderne timpurii, Clark a redefinit studiul demonologiei europene, fiind recunoscut pentru capacitatea de a sintetiza volume vaste de literatură savantă și de a le plasa într-un context interdisciplinar riguros.


Descriere

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.

Recenzii

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.
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
Clarke is showing something of a break with the historiographical trends which have prevailed in witchcraft studies over the last twenty years.
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.
rich and exciting exposition of a belief system.
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.
deeply considered and weighty arguments based on dauntingly wide reading.
this is an ambitious and thematically broad book which constitutes a formidable intellectual achivement.
Thinking with Demons, which offers a lot more than the basics, will intimidate many undergraduates, but will provide them with conclusive proof that witchcraft was not just a matter of village squabbles. It will also remind their teachers of the sheer complexity and pervasiveness of demonological thought.
This book offers a distillation of ... research, within a cogently constructed and copiously documented overall argument ... This is a book for the specialist ... Mastering such a vast body of material as early modern demonology is a huge enterprise, and Dr Clark has performed a most valuable service by his heroic struggle to make its structures and thought-patterns comprehensible.
a tour de force
It is a major accumulation of information about western European writings on witchcraft ... It will be a text consulted and cited by many subsequent scholars on witchcraft.
' ... an important book ... in every sense a magisterial work of a historian of consummate skill. Carefully researched and documented, supported by a mountainous bibliography, this is a book that should be carefully read, and re-read, by every historian of the early modern period.'
This is a massive work. It covers far more ground than its title indicates...It is good, in these days of soundbites, "dumbing-down" and widespread intellectual sloth, to come upon such a monument of scholarship. The time, determination and care that must have gone into creating it are most impressive--and so is the result. The hopes and fears, doubts and certainties of the early modern intelligentsia come powerfully alive. Anyone who wishes to enter imaginatively into that mental world might well start by reading this remarkable book.
of all the books on the subject which have recently appeared, this is perhaps the most remarkable, raising our understanding of ideas about witchcraft to a new level of sophistication. It is based on massive research in teh learned literature of demonology in the period.../ ... Clark's erudition is combined with intense methodological sophistication.../ ... there is no doubt that IThinking With DemonsI will force us to reconsider the place of witchcraft in early modern ideas, and thus to think more deeply about the nature of those ideas in themselves./ Michael Hunter, Birkbeck College, London, Eighteenth Century Life, vol 22, no 2, May 1998.
Important and provocative. A magisterial survey of European demonological thought from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Clark's mastery of the sources, his effective use of linguistic theory, and the originality of his interpretations make the reading of this massive, complex, and skilfully constructed book an immensely rewarding experience, one that easily repays the time and effort that one must invest in it. The most comprehensive and thorough study of early modern witchcraft beliefs in any language.