In Detestable and Wicked Arts, Paul B. Moyer places early New England's battle against black magic in a transatlantic perspective. Moyer provides an accessible and comprehensive examination of witch prosecutions in the Puritan colonies that discusses how their English inhabitants understood the crime of witchcraft, why some people ran a greater risk of being accused of occult misdeeds, and how gender intersected with witch-hunting.

Focusing on witchcraft cases in New England between roughly 1640 and 1670, Detestable and Wicked Arts highlights ties between witch-hunting in the New and Old Worlds. Informed by studies on witchcraft in early modern Europe, Moyer presents a useful synthesis of scholarship on occult crime in New England and makes new and valuable contributions to the field.

About the Author

Paul B. Moyer is Professor of History at SUNY Brockport. He is the author of Wild Yankees and The Public Universal Friend.

Reviews

Deeply researched, crisply composed, and highly engaging, this is arguably the best introductory survey available on witchcraft in the early modern English Atlantic. A work of synthesis and innovative scholarship, it will be of interest to neophytes and experts alike.

* Choice *

The virtue of Paul Moyer's book is that it presents in most readable form the basics of a dense and complex subject: witchcraft beliefs and practices in New England and early modern Europe in the period between 1640 and 1670. A transatlantic analysis of witchcraft activity in this period is essential because New England thinkers were reading and assimilating European ideas and seeing themselves in that light, especially in terms of English cases. Moyer's book is rich in material and well nuanced. The subject as a whole, including all the relevant cases and a variety of interpretive perspectives, has rarely been brought together in a single volume.

* Early American Literature *

Detestable and Wicked Arts is an important and needed contribution to the study of New England witchcraft, as well as to the field of Atlantic studies Moyer's accessible, jargon-free writing style and sophisticated handling of an extraordinary number of primary sources and case studies makes Detestable and Wicked Arts especially suitable for undergraduate and graduate students and nonspecialists

* Journal of American History *

Moyer's study is an extremely well-researched, fully considered, well-structured study of events that are, by their very nature, incoherent and messy.

* The Seventeenth Century *



Book Information
ISBN 9781501751615
Author Paul B. Moyer
Format Paperback
Page Count 294
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 21mm