Cursing, Crisis and Customary Knowledge in Early Modern English Townships

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Cursing, Crisis and Customary Knowledge in Early Modern English Townships is written by Karen O'Brien and published by Springer Nature. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 3031440455 (ISBN 10) and 9783031440458 (ISBN 13).

This book provides a historical and socio-legal investigation into the prevalence of litigation arising from cursing and interpersonal hostility in the under-explored region of Northwest England during a period of acute socio-economic crisis in the seventeenth century. Contributing to the scholarship of magic and witchcraft, it shows the complex circumstances of the world of healing and harming using customary knowledge such as magic and folk medicine as it is variously presented in the documents of the legal system. While primary sources such as pamphlets have usefully informed numerous witchcraft studies, this book establishes popular belief derived from the depositions, interrogatories and various other manuscripts of the manorial, ecclesiastical and secular courts positioned within a micro historical early modern context.