Overview

Focusing on the crossroads in the early modern period, this book deals with the literature and history of the physical crossroads: it's magical and religious encounters, rituals of transformation, binding of undesirable spirits, siting of gallows, associations with music, and links to ancient cosmology. Physical crossroads have been culturally vital sites where forces human, demonic and divine were felt to converge. Crossroads have seemed to render the boundaries between these spheres negotiable, subject to certain artifice and timing. They gave access to gods and facilitated deals with devils, they were potent sites for rituals intended to influence lovers or harm enemies and provided both a dramatic stage for communal activities and a burial ground for the unwanted dead cast out in ceremonies of the night.

Full Product Details

9781474499828

Table of Contents

Reviews

Bill Angus offers a rich and fascinating exploration of the symbolic potential of the uncanny points at which roads simultaneously meet and diverge, showing that whether as places for selling one's soul, burying the outcast dead, or encountering the supernatural, crossroads in the early modern imagination were charged and dangerous.--Lisa Hopkins, Sheffield Hallam University

Author Information

Bill Angus, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature, Massey University.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available