CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Aldazabal, Ana Ines |
|---|---|
| Title | When Woman Married Satan: The Emergence of Diabolical Witchcraft in French Medieval Literature |
| Summary | In the Middle Ages, official attitudes towards magical practices evolved from the skepticism admonished by tenth-century canon law to a widespread belief in the threat of demonic witches by the end of the fifteenth century. In literary works, representations of magic and magical practitioners do not always seem to adhere to official views. Analysis of the relationships between literary and non-literary written sources concerned with the issue of witchcraft can prove fruitful in understanding the change in attitude that took place during the fifteenth century. This thesis will focus on the development of witch-like figures in French-language literary works. It will first trace the general trends in the evolution of the stereotype of the witch from the genesis of courtly romance in twelfth-century France to the advent of representations of diabolical witchcraft in fifteenth-century literature, at the time when some of the first mass witch trials were taking place in francophone lands. Then, it will focus on an episode of the little-known Roman de Perceforest. Through a close-reading analysis of this fifteenth-century romance episode, I will try to assess how some of the impressions obtained through a general analysis of the stereotype’s development materialize in a specific case. Through the work carried out in this thesis, I hope to offer a contribution to the study of the shaping of diabolical witchcraft in vernacular literary sources of the last centuries of the Middle Ages. |
| Supervisor | Klaniczay, Gábor |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/aldazabal_ana-ines.pdf |
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