This thesis offers a comprehensive study of Jean Bodin's treatise De la Demonomanie des sorciers (1580), seeking to reinterpret the importance of the text within the corpus of Bodin's four central texts, and within a larger corpus of contemporary texts published on the persecution of witchcraft in early-modern France. This will provide a new critical insight into Bodin and the Demonomanie, which considers how the context of the witch trials unites the two predominant strands of Bodin's thought, religion and politics, and which offers a more complete appreciation of Bodin in the broader context of intellectual early-modern Europe. A close reading of the text, which takes into account the broader politico-religious contexts, gives priority to what Blair (1997) has described as 'the intermediate being' or 'the middle term' operating as a spatial, temporal and symbolic interconnector between two opposing points. This study situates Bodin and the Demonomanie at the intersection of various interconnecting axes which interweave these aspects of the intermediary: that is, the humanist movement of sixteenth century Europe, the position of France within this movement, the function of the Demonomanie in terms of the political and religious concerns of Bodin's corpus, and the role of the witch-figure as an intermediary agent between the human and demonic worlds.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:695662 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Maguire, Jennifer Mary |
| Publisher | Queen's University Belfast |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds