Subjects
Possession, Puritanism and Print:
Darrell, Harsnett, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Exorcism Controversy
Marion Gibson
Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World
978 1 85196 832 9: 216x138mm: £60.00/$99.00
Gibson tells a compelling story of injustice and passionate resistance to religious persecution at the end of the Elizabethan period. She examines the 1598 Church of England trial of the Puritan preacher John Darrell for fraudulent exorcism, and the surrounding pamphlet controversy.
This is the first book to relate the apparently obscure debate over methods of exorcism to parallel rebellions of the godly, the young, women and the ‘common’ people, some thirty years before these rebellions would begin to surface during the English Civil War. It is based closely on unpublished sources, including little-known documents which suggest that John Darrell lived longer than previously thought.
Sample pages
Readership
Early Modern Studies, Religious Studies, History of Print
Contents
Chapter 1: A Social Geography of Exorcism: ‘Farre from the Eye of Justice’
Chapter 2: ‘A Booke Declaring the Fearfull Vexation’: Spreading the Word
Chapter 3: ‘Sinnful, Shamfull, Lying, and Ridiculous’: The Possession of William Sommers
Chapter 4: ‘Pare Thy Nails, Dad’: The Enemy Within
Chapter 5: From Demons to Demonology: Dialogicall Discourses and Summarie Answeres
Chapter 6: ‘Do You But Counterfeit?’: The Madman in the Wilderness
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