The authors use impressively rich demographic detail to support the thesis that the witch trials are best explained as symptoms of typical social tensions in provincial towns at the time. This short book is a solid contribution to the understanding of the 1692 witch trials.
" Salem Possessed ," wrote Robin Briggs in The Times Literary Supplement, "reinterprets a world-famous episode so completely and convincingly that virtually all the previous treatments can be consigned to the historical lumber-room." Not simply a dramatic and isolated event, the Salem outbreak has wider implications for our understanding of developments central to the American experience: the breakup of Puritanism, the pressures of land and population in New England towns, the problems besetting farmer and householder, the shifting role of the church, and the powerful impact of commercial capitalism.
From rich and varied sources-many previously neglected or unknown-Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum give us a picture of the events of 1692 more intricate and more fascinating than any other in the already massive literature on Salem. Salem Possessed explores the lives of the men and women who helped spin that web and who in the end found themselves entangled in it.
The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion, individual and organized, which had been growing for more than a generation before the witch trials. Urn:isbn:0674282655 Scandate 20111211012023 Scanner girls writhing in agony, stern judges meting out harsh verdicts, nineteen bodies swinging on Gallows Hill. OL2024847W Page-progression lr Page_number_confidence 88.46 Pages 262 Ppi 500 Related-external-id urn:isbn:0674785266 Urn:lcp:salempossessedso00boye:epub:87027c0c-d7de-40ac-9105-83ebf7d9eb6d Extramarc Duke University Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier salempossessedso00boye Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t8rb83772 Isbn 0674785258ĩ780674785250 Lccn 73084399 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary_edition
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