Overview

"For centuries witches on trial admitted to taking part in gruesome ""sabbaths"" where they cast spells, worshipped a bestial devil, enacted obscenely blasphemous rites and even devoured corpses. Many scholars believe that such confessions, often enacted under torture were just a reflection of their persecutors' fantasies. Certainly as Carlo Ginzburg shows, witch hunters adapted the stereotypes earlier used to descredit and persecute lepers and Jews."

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9780226296937

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Reviews

At times, Ecstacies can be demanding. . . . But persist, and you will be rewarded with truly haunting stories and speculations. --Michael Dirda Barnesandnoblereview.com Ginzburg's learning is prodigious and his journey through two thousand years of Eurasian folkore a tour de force. --Keith Thomas The Observer Ecstasies manages, with extraordinary candor, clarity, grace, and erudition, to steer between lurid sensationalism and dry-as-dust academic drivel, and between purely localized historiography and universalism. This is a big, bold, brilliant book. --Wendy Doniger New York Times Book Review At times, Ecstacies can be demanding. . . . But persist, and you will be rewarded with truly haunting stories and speculations. --Michael Dirda Barnesandnoblereview.com Ecstasies manages, with extraordinary candor, clarity, grace, and erudition, to steer between lurid sensationalism and dry-as-dust academic drivel, and between purely localized historiography and universalism. This is a big, bold, brilliant book. --Wendy Doniger New York Times Book Review Ginzburg''s learning is prodigious and his journey through two thousand years of Eurasian folkore a tour de force. --;i>The Observer --Keith Thomas The Observer

At times, Ecstacies can be demanding. . . . But persist, and you will be rewarded with truly haunting stories and speculations. --Michael Dirda Barnesandnoblereview.com

At times, Ecstacies can be demanding. . . . But persist, and you will be rewarded with truly haunting stories and speculations. --Michael Dirda Barnesandnoblereview.com Ginzburg's learning is prodigious and his journey through two thousand years of Eurasian folkore a tour de force. --Keith Thomas The Observer Ecstasies manages, with extraordinary candor, clarity, grace, and erudition, to steer between lurid sensationalism and dry-as-dust academic drivel, and between purely localized historiography and universalism. This is a big, bold, brilliant book. --Wendy Doniger New York Times Book Review At times, Ecstacies can be demanding. . . . But persist, and you will be rewarded with truly haunting stories and speculations. --Michael Dirda Barnesandnoblereview.com Ecstasies manages, with extraordinary candor, clarity, grace, and erudition, to steer between lurid sensationalism and dry-as-dust academic drivel, and between purely localized historiography and universalism. This is a big, bold, brilliant book. --Wendy Doniger New York Times Book Review Ginzburg''s learning is prodigious and his journey through two thousand years of Eurasian folkore a tour de force. --;i>The Observer --Keith Thomas The Observer

"""[Ginzburg] charms by mixing the historic with the horrific, with writing in a way that creates page-turners out of scholars and general readers alike. Ginzburg . . . is a kind of necromancer, calling up the spirits of the dead to thrill us and to speak to us of marvels.""-- ""Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance"" ""Ginzburg's learning is prodigious and his journey through two thousand years of Eurasian folkore a tour de force.""--Keith Thomas ""The Observer"" ""Ecstasies is a work of uncompromising scholarship and erudition, but it is not intended for the scholar alone. It is also a rich tapestry of anecdote and incident, a chamber of horrors, curiosity shop, and medieval bestiary all in one.""-- ""Guardian"" ""Ecstasies manages, with extraordinary candor, clarity, grace, and erudition, to steer between lurid sensationalism and dry-as-dust academic drivel, and between purely localized historiography and universalism. This is a big, bold, brilliant book.""--Wendy Doniger ""New York Times Book Review"" ""At times, Ecstacies can be demanding. . . . But persist, and you will be rewarded with truly haunting stories and speculations.""--Michael Dirda ""Barnesandnoblereview.com"" ""By any standards, Ecstasies is a bravura performance. It is difficult to think of any other historian who combines such polymathic cultural erudition, grasp of textual and visual detail, and high theoretical aim-not to mention literary skill."" -- ""London Review of Books"" ""Ginzburg here partially rehabilitates an older point of view, that the witch-cult represented a survival of ancient mysteries, the practice of shamanistic ceremonies forbidden by official Catholicism. Ecstasies offers the result of Ginzburg's researches, in chapters as replete with odd learning and lore as Robert Graves's White Goddess."" -- ""Washington Post"""

Author Information

Carlo Ginzburg is the Franklin D. Murphy Professor of Italian Renaissance Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Cheese and the Worms, The Night Battles, and Myths, Emblems, and Clues. Raymond Rosenthal (1922-2002) received the Present Tense Award for his translation of Primo Levi's The Periodic Table and was twice nominated for the National Book Award for his translations.

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