Magic and Language

Perspectives on Jewish and Christian Magic in Early Modern Europe

edited by Yuval Harari, Gerold Necker and Marco Frenschkowski

Book cover: Magic and Language

Extent: 292 pages

Publisher: Harrassowitz Verlag

Subjects: Early Modern & Renaissance Studies, Jewish Studies, Religious Studies

Series: Studies in Magic and Kabbalah

Series volume number: 1

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(September 2024)

ISBN: 9783447122634

Price: $86.00

In stock

Magic and Language is dedicated to phenomena, texts, and writers with magical affiliations and their interactions with reality, daily life, cultural images, language, ritual, theology, and literature. The sources discussed primarily come from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Although the main focus of this volume is oriented towards the Jewish frame of reference, it also engages with various Christian views as well as with intercultural interactions in the form of the exchange of perceptions, concepts, and practices in the field. The relationship between “magic and language”-that is, the connection between what is essentially a system of ritual technology and its expression in theoretical writing or as a performative act-is particularly complex and multilayered. It encompasses the very verbal essence of the magic act and its linguistic components, differences between verbal and nonverbal acts, performative speech and writing as opposed to, for example, the listing of information in manuals of know-how, and the coding of language using non-semantic elements such as seals and other performative diagrams. All these aspects and more are the focus of well-known experts and young researchers in Jewish or Christian magic and Kabbalah in this volume.

  • Edited by Marco Frenschkowski
  • Edited by Yuval Harari
  • Edited by Gerold Necker