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Book synopsis

This 1980 book examines witchcraft beliefs and experiences in the Bocage, a rural area of western France. It also introduced a powerful theoretical attitude towards the progress of the ethnographer's enquiries, suggesting that a full knowledge of witchcraft involves being 'caught up' in it oneself. In the Bocage, being bewitched is to be 'caught' in a sequence of misfortunes. According to those who are bewitched, the culprit is someone in the neighbourhood: the witch, who can cast a spell with a word, a touch or a look, and whose 'power' comes from a book of spells inherited from an ancestor. Only a professional magician, an 'unwitcher', has any chance of breaking the succession of misfortunes which befall those who have been bewitched. He undertakes a battle of magic with the suspected witch, a battle which is eventually fatal.

Book details

Book category Books in English Society & social sciences Sociology & anthropology Anthropology

• Full title: Deadly Words
• Subtitle: Witchcraft in the Bocage
• Author: Jeanne Favret-Saada
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 284
• EAN: 9780521297875
• ISBN: 0521297877
• ID: 02027104
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Weight: 442 g
• Dimensions: 151 × 228 × 15 mm
• Date of publishing: 04. December 1980

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