Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft

Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft examines how accounts of Renaissance witchcraft entered literature and continued to shape later ideas about witches. Marion Gibson considers the North Berwick trials, Matthew Hopkins and the literary treatment of witchcraft in works including Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Middleton’s The Witch.

The book then follows the modern revival and reinvention of these materials, beginning with Scotland and extending through wartime writing, British witch-hunting narratives and American cultural influences. Later chapters consider the legacy of the North Berwick, Hopkins and Salem trials, alongside magical realism and magical romance since the 1960s. Literature, film and television feature in an account of how Renaissance witchcraft has remained a recurring cultural subject.