Kommentar |
Literature and other narrative media have a long history of incorporating witches and witchcraft into their imaginary worlds. Often, these themes are included as primarily fantastic interventions that support world building that presupposes the existence of magic. Other texts, however, focus on the historical dimension of witchcraft and the persecution of witches in European countries as well as in North America. It is this latter narrative dynamic that will concern us in this class. In the course of the semester, we will discuss texts by Nathaniel Hawthorn, Arthur Miller, Ann Petry and Rivka Galchen and consider how these texts utilize themes connected to historical witch trials – most famously for North America during the Salem witch panic of 1692, but we will also look to Europe – in order to address urgent issues and discourses of their own historical moment. In the process, we will become acquainted with critical discussion around the genre of historical narrative. Students will be expected to have read the respective texts in advance of the class and to come prepared to discuss their own ideas and opinions in relation to them. Please make sure that you have finished reading The House of the Seven Gables by the third session of the course.
You will need to purchase the following texts for this class: 1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables. Edited by Robert S. Levine. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2020. (Second Norton Critical Edition). ISBN 978-0-393-67946-5 2. Arthur Miller, The Crucible. Penguin Books, 2015. ISBN 978-0-141-18255-1 3. Rivka Galchen, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. ISBN 978-0374280468 (note that we might switch to the paperback edition if it is released in time for our class) Further readings will be made available via MS Teams. |