Deadly Words
Deadly Words
Looking for an examination copy?
This title is not currently available for examination. However, if you are interested in the title for your course we can consider offering an examination copy. To register your interest please contact collegesales@cambridge.org providing details of the course you are teaching.
$51.99
USDThis 1980 book examines witchcraft beliefs and experiences in the Bocage, a rural area of western France. It also introduced a powerful theoretical attitude towards the progress of the ethnographer's enquiries, suggesting that a full knowledge of witchcraft involves being 'caught up' in it oneself. In the Bocage, being bewitched is to be 'caught' in a sequence of misfortunes. According to those who are bewitched, the culprit is someone in the neighbourhood: the witch, who can cast a spell with a word, a touch or a look, and whose 'power' comes from a book of spells inherited from an ancestor. Only a professional magician, an 'unwitcher', has any chance of breaking the succession of misfortunes which befall those who have been bewitched. He undertakes a battle of magic with the suspected witch, a battle which is eventually fatal.
Product details
January 1981Paperback
9780521297875
284 pages
230 × 153 × 17 mm
0.44kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Part I. There Must Be a Subject
- Section 1. The Way Things Are Said:
- 1. The mirror-image of an academic
- 2. Words spoken with insistence
- 3. When words wage war
- Section 2. Between 'Caught' and Catching:
- 1. Those who haven't been caught can't talk about it
- 2. A name added to a position
- 3. Taking one's distances from whom (or what)?
- Section 3. When the Text Has its Own Foreword
- Part II. The Realm of Secrecy
- Section 4. Someone Must Be Credulous
- Section 5. Tempted By the Impossible
- Section 6. The Less One Talks, The Less One Is Caught
- Part III. Telling It All
- Section 7. If You Could Do Something:
- 1. A bewitched in hospital
- 2. She a magician?
- 3. The misunderstanding
- 4. Impotent against impotence
- Section 8. The Omnipotent Witch:
- 1. The imperishable bastard
- 2. Speaking
- 3. Touching
- 4. Looking
- 5. A death at the crossroads
- 6. Ex post facto
- Section 9. Taking Over:
- 1. Inexplicable misfortunes
- 2. The other witch
- Section 10. To Return Evil for Evil:
- 1. Madame Marie from Alençon
- 2. Madame Marie from Izé
- 3. If you feel capable
- Section 11. Mid-way Speculations:
- 1. Concepts and presuppositions
- 2. Attack by witchcraft and its warding off
- Appendices
- References.
