Année : 2012

Ancient Greece and Rome are rarely depicted objectively in modern popular culture. Sometimes these ancient cultures, epitomised by smooth white marble and classical beauty, are idealised and glorified. More commonly, they are depicted as wicked and corrupt, decadent and licentious, characterised by excessive drinking, the violence and bloodlust of the arena, sexual deviance and a lust for world domination. Intertwined with these characterisations are other groups, notably Jews and Christians, who may be depicted as foils to the pagan population. Portrayals of ancient Judaism and...

The publication of early witchcraft texts created witches by creating controversy about them. Witch-dramas, pamphlets, testimonies about witch-encounters, sermons, and accounts of trials published the anxieties, recounted the long standing suspicions, and sensationalised the physical manifestations that made women into witches. Sometimes accompanied by woodcuts, many texts insisted on the reality, materiality, and immediacy of witches and their familiars. In these, the early modern witch was represented as both a perpetrator of violence and the victim of it.The early modern witch is a...

Despite the attempts of feminists the conjunction between evil and the feminine seems unbroken. Established as secondary, derivative and hence inferior, women have been long suspected of being the source of human (though more often masculine) miseries, always in cahoots with the forces of evil and destruction. Paradoxically, at the same time, some have also been put on the pedestal and lauded as ideals of purity and dedication, yet these paragons only proved the rule that, on average, the feminine/woman equals imperfect and transgressive. Mischievous, beguiling, seductive, lascivious,...