Erika Gasser. Vexed with Devils

In Vexed with Devils, Erika Gasser has created a gendered transatlantic cultural history of the much-studied topic of early modern witchcraft. This book, however, is much more than another effort to explain the infamous Salem, Massachusetts, outbreak. Gasser takes a step back from this tale and the historians who have tried to explain it. In fact, she looks at possession and witchcraft narratives in England and New England in an effort to understand what kind of cultural work these stories did in the early modern Anglo-Atlantic world. She is particularly interested in gender and power, specifically the construction of manhood in these accounts. She examines published (and some unpublished) accounts of demonic possession and witchcraft in England and New England between 1564 and 1700. In the end, she exposes underlying patterns of male power in these accounts and in the events they describe. She also concludes that these texts had a great deal in common despite real differences between the two sides of the Atlantic (i.e., an indigenous presence in North America) and marked political change during the period under study.

Ancient history · Art · Atlantic World · Genealogy · Indigenous · Literature · Narrative · New england · Political science · Politics · Possession (linguistics) · Power (physics) · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies