The Sorceress

Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
579K words
Chapters
58

Tags

History and Culture World HistoryReligion Historical ReappraisalLegendary LivesPower OppressionSocial CritiqueIntellectual CommentaryMiddle AgesReligion and WitchcraftExotic CultureFolk CustomsFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.La Sorcière by Jules MicheletAuthor: Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874,Language: French, Class: BF: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Psychology, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Release Date: Nov 25, 2012

Editor's review

Michelet's La Sorcière is a highly distinctive work within nineteenth-century French Romantic historiography. With a poetic touch the author reexamines the European witch hunts from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, restoring the "witch," demonized by mainstream discourse, to the image of a marginalized figure who resisted oppression and carried folk beliefs and natural knowledge. The book combines the historian's marshaling of sources with the writer's imagination and lyricism; its views are pronounced and strongly polemical, reading more like a historical essay than a work of rigorous empirical research. This Project Gutenberg public-domain French electronic edition is well suited as a primary text for understanding the historiography of the witch hunts, the style of Romantic historiography, and the development of Michelet's thought. It should be read in the context of historiography and literary criticism, the better to appreciate both its insights and its biases.

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Reading tips

  1. Read a general overview of witch-hunt history first to establish context, then enter the main text, so as not to be led along by the author's stance.
  2. Mark lyrical and argumentative passages as you go, distinguishing cited sources from the author's imagination.
  3. Read alongside later witch-hunt scholarship to test the explanatory power and limits of Michelet's views.
  4. With the French original, read slowly; when you meet a long sentence, grasp the argument first, then return to its rhetoric.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this book a rigorous academic work on witch-hunt history? No. It is closer to a historical essay, interweaving sources and imagination, and is strongly polemical. It should be read as a text in historiography and literature rather than as empirical research in the contemporary sense, and its causal judgments should be treated with caution.
Can I read this book without knowing French? This e-book is the French original, so it cannot be read directly without French. It is advisable to find a reliable translation for comparison, or first read secondary literature introducing Michelet's historical thought before deciding whether to go deeper into the original text.
Why did Michelet seek to rehabilitate the "witch"? This is connected to his Romantic view of history and his opposition to ecclesiastical authority. He saw the witch as a repressed folk force and a resister, using her to criticize religious persecution since the Middle Ages; the book therefore carries a clear projection of values.
What should I be most wary of while reading? Be wary of taking the author's poetic judgments as historical fact. His portrayals of people and eras are highly evocative, but some inferences lack rigorous evidence and should be cross-checked against other research.

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About the author

Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874 Author

Michelet, Jules (1798-1874) was a renowned French historian, celebrated for his monumental Histoire de France. The collection holds 36 of his works, including the multi-volume Histoire de France as well as titles on the sea and medieval witchcraft: La mer, a literary treatment of nature, and La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages, which focuses on witchcraft and persecution in the Middle Ages. His writing combines the rigor of a historian with a poet's imagination, turning historical sources into vivid, emotionally charged narrative, and he occupies an important place in French Romantic historiography. In this collection his works are classed under inspirational growth, perhaps for their deep reflection on life and history. Public information is limited, so biographical details are not elaborated here; readers may approach his scholarship and style through the works mentioned above.