Code: 01323746

Enchanted Europe

Name: Enchanted Europe
Brand: Oxford University Press
SKU: 01323746
Price: 48.00 EUR
Availability: InStock

by Euan Cameron

Language: English
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 488
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2011
More about this

48 €

In stock at our supplier
Shipping in 19 - 25 days

Add to wishlist

The Bottom Billion
14.24 € -28 %
Buy
Guardian Angel
33.85 € -16 %
Buy
La Biomasse Et l'Astaxanthine Chez Haematococcus Pluvialis (Flotow)
76.91 €
Buy
Au Laos, Etude
15.56 €
Buy
Systemtheorie Und Der Wohlfahrtsstaat Nach Niklas Luhmann
15.66 € -9 %
Buy
Eine Art zu leben
21.22 € -14 %
Buy

Give this book as a present today

Order book and choose Gift Order.
We will send you book gift voucher at once. You can give it out to anyone.
Book will be send to donee, nothing more to care about.

Book gift voucher sample Read more

You get 120 loyalty points

Book synopsis

Since the dawn of history people have used charms and spells to try to control their environment, and forms of divination to try to foresee the otherwise unpredictable chances of life. Many of these techniques were called 'superstitious' by educated elites. For centuries religious believers used 'superstition' as a term of abuse to denounce another religion that they thought inferior, or to criticize their fellow-believers for practising their faith 'wrongly'. From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, scholars argued over what 'superstition' was, how to identify it, and how to persuade people to avoid it. Learned believers in demons and witchcraft, in their treatises and sermons, tried to make 'rational' sense of popular superstitions by blaming them on the deceptive tricks of seductive demons. Every major movement in Christian thought, from rival schools of medieval theology through to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, added new twists to the debates over superstition. Protestants saw Catholics as superstitious, and vice versa. Enlightened philosophers mocked traditional cults as superstitions. Eventually, the learned lost their worry about popular belief, and turned instead to chronicling and preserving 'superstitious' customs as folklore and ethnic heritage. Enchanted Europe is the first comprehensive, integrated account of western Europe's long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs. Drawing on many little-known and rarely used texts, Euan Cameron constructs a compelling narrative of the rise, diversification, and decline of popular 'superstition' in the European mind.