Papers by Francesca Matteoni
Folklore, 2013
According to the widespread assumption, fairy tales stemmed from an ancient oral tradition, and w... more According to the widespread assumption, fairy tales stemmed from an ancient oral tradition, and were then reworked in their written form, primarily during the early modern age and then by nineteenth century folklorists who searched for a past, popular background that survived to Christianization. Focusing on the collections of the brothers Grimm, Willem de Blécourt admirably challenges this view, adducing an impressive amount of scholar research in his new book, Tales of Magic, tales in print, a genealogy of fairy tales. The book aims to a double demonstration: first, that printed sources, more than untraceable oral ones, formed the ground of fairy tales; second that fairy tales as genre is only a few centuries old European creation. In his pursuit the author renews a task similar to that attempted by Albert Wesselski in the early twentieth century and to the more recent theories on fairy and folk tales by Ruth Bottigheimer. Yet he is also mostly interested in revealing the various seams intertwined in a single fairy-tale, which 'is always a complex of stories, a series of texts, synchronically as well diachronically' (p.13). By using a genealogical approach, de Blécourt points at the nonlinear procedures of his research: it will struggle with fragments, variations in the storylines, geographical dislocation of the same tale and with the expectations of either the collectors or their informants. In the author's words: 'any attempt to find meaning in a fairy tale is compounded if not altogether frustrated by its narrative history. Meaning is synchronic, that is to say, attributed to a story at a specific moment in time; a story's genealogy moves it through time and erodes its earlier meaning' (p.101). Thus the book is not concerned with cultural, psychological or universal themes of the tales, but with the stories themselves and their place in history. De Blécourt frames some fairy tale clusters in a consequential structure, mirroring the temporal modalities through which the stories arrived to the Grimm. Such a structure is strongly thoughtprovoking: as in a fairy-tale, the reader will have to open several things, either concealing or composing the desired soul. Chapters one and two, deal respectively with the Three Feathers of the Ogre, edited by the brothers as the Three Golden Hairs of the Devil, and the Quest for the Bird or the Golden Bird. The author addresses the findings of past scholars from the Finnish folklorists to Wesselski, and starts showing how an oral transmission entered fairy tales' construction. As he explains on page 44, orality has a fundamental role, because it consisted of "the reading aloud, reciting and conveying its memory for the purpose of writing down a story". This is the core of chapters 3 and 5, dedicated to the relation between the Grimm and their female informants: the bourgeois Wild and Hassenpflug families, and Dorothea Viehmann, the elderly woman who encoded Grimm's romantic view of the anonymous people as the keepers of a lost world's memories. The author argues how the tellers rearranged different plots and motifs in one single tale, often relying on the available printed material, in order to please the male collectors. Chapters 4 and 6 go further, beyond Europe. De Blécourt first tracks the literary dissemination of the Magician and His Pupil from Europe to eastern countries, to prove a process of mutual borrowings rather than the established thesis of an Indian origin of the tales. Then he moves to the Hungarian context and the problematic issue of shamanistic theories applied to otherworldly travels. If there ever was any shamanic feature in fairy tales, it pertained to nineteenth century collectors' sublimation, that is to a constructed idea of shamanism, deprived of experiential content. This discourse is valuable for every archaic source, supposedly hidden in the stories. Hence he claims that 'ancient 'clues' become nothing more (or less) than narrative devices without any direct relation to the world as it is experienced beyond' (p. 172).
Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies, Jul 17, 2013
Executing Magic in the Modern Era, 2017
The physical influence of the executed criminal could live on long beyond execution, post-mortem ... more The physical influence of the executed criminal could live on long beyond execution, post-mortem spectacle and burial. This chapter explores how different cultures viewed and dealt with the spirits of executed criminals, and carried out a range of preventative post-mortem practices to ensure the dead did not come back to terrorise the living, whether in the guise of vampires or ghosts. It then considers why spiritualists in the nineteenth century actively sought out communication with the criminal dead. The curious American tradition and influence of Hangman Friday is also considered.
Executing Magic in the Modern Era, 2017
The materiality of gallows' sites and the apparatus of execution had their own magical and medica... more The materiality of gallows' sites and the apparatus of execution had their own magical and medical afterlife, inextricably linked with, yet ultimately independent of, the executed criminal. This chapter includes discussion on European gallows traditions, English legends of providential strangulation, and the trade in and lore of the gallows mandrake. It then focuses on the trade in hanging ropes in Europe and America, and the relationship between mementos and magical talismans. We move now from matters concerning the identity and potency of criminal bodies to their post-mortem relationship with the immediate physical environment where their last sentient moments were extinguished and witnessed. The materiality of gallows sites and the apparatus of execution have their own magical and medical afterlife, inextricably linked with, yet ultimately independent of, the executed criminal. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, execution sites across Western Europe were increasingly situated in fixed locations, with those sentenced for capital offences being condemned to die 'at the usual place'. There had always been a mix of urban and rural gallows, of course, but the process of state-building led to centralised control over The Places and Tools of Execution © The Author(s) 2017 O. Davies and F. Matteoni, Executing Magic in the Modern Era, Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife,
Mortality, May 19, 2016
For criminals the moment of death marked the beginning of a new social existence, in
which their... more For criminals the moment of death marked the beginning of a new social existence, in
which their former identities disappeared in the magico-medical employments of their bodies. Blood, fat and bones were sought for by people as effective medicines or as protective charms. This paper aims to look at the survival of such traditions in nineteenth-century western Europe, discussing how a blend of learned notions and folk-beliefs nurtured the view of an untimely dead body as full of physical and spiritual usable powers.
KEYWORDS: blood; fat; bones; magic; execution; criminal corpse; executioner; epilepsy;
folk-medicine; blood-drinking; usnea; nineteenth-century Europe
Executing Magic in the Modern Era, 2017
This chapter begins by looking at the trade in human fat into the nineteenth century, and how the... more This chapter begins by looking at the trade in human fat into the nineteenth century, and how the control over its availability switched from the executioner to the anatomy schools. This, and other developments, led to the decline of the executioner-healer on the Continent. The similar trade in human skin for macabre mementos and magic is explored. The chapter then considers the history of the healing touch of the hanged man's hand in England, and the rise of blood-drinking at beheadings in nineteenth-century Germany and Scandinavia. Keywords Human fat • Blood-drinking • Human skin • Hanged man's hand • Healing touch The French journalist, Félix Pyat, observed humorously in 1841 that 'the executioner is a bit of a doctor, just as the doctor is a bit of an executioner'. 1 However, by this time the role of the executioner-healer was vanishing. As Kathy Stuart has discussed with regard to Germany, during the early modern period the medical side of the executioners' profession had given the dishonourable trade an important route to social mobility. At least nine executioners' sons matriculated from the University of Ingolstadt, Bavaria, between 1680 and 1770, for instance. However, restrictions regarding executioner medicine, and the abolition of torture across western and central Europe during the late eighteenth century,
This chapter examines historic views on the potency, power and agency of the living criminal body... more This chapter examines historic views on the potency, power and agency of the living criminal body in the early modern and modern periods as a way of understanding the potency of the criminal corpse. The main section of the chapter focuses on the witch as the most powerful of living criminal bodies. There is discussion on phrenological interpretations of criminality and the work of Cesare Lombroso on the 'born criminal'. The meaning of cruentation, or the ordeal by bleeding corpse, is also explored.
Folklore, 2013
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or s... more This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Folklore, 2008
The reality of the blood libel legend and accusations of ritual murder against Jews in medieval a... more The reality of the blood libel legend and accusations of ritual murder against Jews in medieval and early modern times has been widely discredited by scholars. They demonstrate instead the processes by which the exclusion of a perceived ethnical and religious enemy strengthened the communal identity of European society at that time. The aim of this paper is to look
1. Blood themes: Introduction 5 1.1 Blood, feelings and the soul: perspectives 5 1.2 Late medieva... more 1. Blood themes: Introduction 5 1.1 Blood, feelings and the soul: perspectives 5 1.2 Late medieval and early modern Europe: blood and the sealed body 11 1.3 History and Anthropology: methodologies 1.4 Blood, power and violence. Anthropological views 19 1.5 Chapters' outline 24 2. Drawing blood: The Devil's pact and witchcraft 27 2.1 Witchcraft and blood 27 2.2 Intruders: from Jews to witches 2.3 The devil's brood and the cannibalistic feast 33 2.4 The pact 2.5 Harmful magic: vampirism, lameness and pins 2.6 Domestic spaces 2.7 The decaying body 66 3. Supernatural beings: Fairies, vampires, werewolves 71 3.1 Blood and supernatural beings 3.2 Fairies and witches 72 3.3 Elf-shot and milk-stealing 75 3.4 Fairyland and the dead 3.5 The vampire 90 3.6 Human countermeasures 98 3.7 Shapeshifting and the werewolf 101 4. The integral body: Theories of blood 3 4.1 The liquid body and the spirited blood 4.2 Consumptive diseases 116 4.3 Bleeding and putrefaction 120 4.4 Breaking physical boundaries: blood and imagination 4.5 Passions of the mind. Frenzy, madness and melancholy 4.6 The intruder: epilepsy, envy and fascination 134 4.7 Menstruation 4.8 The diffusion of medical theories and folk-remedies 5. Feeding your own demon: The case of England 150 5.1 Blood connections: the devil's mark, fairy tradition and the familiar spirit 5.2 The nurturing witch 160 5.3 The animal form and the representation of the soul 5.4 Scratching 176 5.5 Witch-bottles and counter-magic 182
Richard Sugg, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians
Social History of Medicine, 2013
Marks of an Absolute Witch: Evidentiary Dilemmas in Early Modern England
Cultural and Social History, 2014
This thesis focuses on the significance of blood and the perception of the body in both learned a... more This thesis focuses on the significance of blood and the perception of the body in both learned and popular culture in order to investigate problems of identity and social exclusion in early modern Europe. Starting from the view of blood as a liminal matter, manifesting ...
JONATHAN BARRY. Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640-1789
The American Historical Review, 2013
Social History of Medicine, May 2, 2015
From the eighteenth century through to the abolition of public executions in England in 1868, the... more From the eighteenth century through to the abolition of public executions in England in 1868, the touch of a freshly hanged man's hand was sought after to cure a variety of swellings, wens in particular. While the healing properties of corpse hands in general were acknowledged and experimented with in early modern medicine, the gallows cure achieved prominence during the second half of the eighteenth century. What was it about the hanged man's hand (and it always was a male appendage) that gave it such potency? While frequently denounced as a disgusting 'superstition' in the press, this popular medical practice was inadvertently legitimised and institutionalised by the authorities through changes in execution procedure.
Book Reviews by Francesca Matteoni
folklore, 2013
According to the widespread assumption, fairy tales stemmed from an ancient oral tradition, and w... more According to the widespread assumption, fairy tales stemmed from an ancient oral tradition, and were then reworked in their written form, primarily during the early modern age and then by nineteenth century folklorists who searched for a past, popular background that survived to Christianization. Focusing on the collections of the brothers Grimm, Willem de Blécourt admirably challenges this view, adducing an impressive amount of scholar research in his new book, Tales of Magic, tales in print, a genealogy of fairy tales. The book aims to a double demonstration: first, that printed sources, more than untraceable oral ones, formed the ground of fairy tales; second that fairy tales as genre is only a few centuries old European creation. In his pursuit the author renews a task similar to that attempted by Albert Wesselski in the early twentieth century and to the more recent theories on fairy and folk tales by Ruth Bottigheimer. Yet he is also mostly interested in revealing the various seams intertwined in a single fairy-tale, which 'is always a complex of stories, a series of texts, synchronically as well diachronically' (p.13). By using a genealogical approach, de Blécourt points at the nonlinear procedures of his research: it will struggle with fragments, variations in the storylines, geographical dislocation of the same tale and with the expectations of either the collectors or their informants. In the author's words: 'any attempt to find meaning in a fairy tale is compounded if not altogether frustrated by its narrative history. Meaning is synchronic, that is to say, attributed to a story at a specific moment in time; a story's genealogy moves it through time and erodes its earlier meaning' (p.101). Thus the book is not concerned with cultural, psychological or universal themes of the tales, but with the stories themselves and their place in history. De Blécourt frames some fairy tale clusters in a consequential structure, mirroring the temporal modalities through which the stories arrived to the Grimm. Such a structure is strongly thoughtprovoking: as in a fairy-tale, the reader will have to open several things, either concealing or composing the desired soul. Chapters one and two, deal respectively with the Three Feathers of the Ogre, edited by the brothers as the Three Golden Hairs of the Devil, and the Quest for the Bird or the Golden Bird. The author addresses the findings of past scholars from the Finnish folklorists to Wesselski, and starts showing how an oral transmission entered fairy tales' construction. As he explains on page 44, orality has a fundamental role, because it consisted of "the reading aloud, reciting and conveying its memory for the purpose of writing down a story". This is the core of chapters 3 and 5, dedicated to the relation between the Grimm and their female informants: the bourgeois Wild and Hassenpflug families, and Dorothea Viehmann, the elderly woman who encoded Grimm's romantic view of the anonymous people as the keepers of a lost world's memories. The author argues how the tellers rearranged different plots and motifs in one single tale, often relying on the available printed material, in order to please the male collectors. Chapters 4 and 6 go further, beyond Europe. De Blécourt first tracks the literary dissemination of the Magician and His Pupil from Europe to eastern countries, to prove a process of mutual borrowings rather than the established thesis of an Indian origin of the tales. Then he moves to the Hungarian context and the problematic issue of shamanistic theories applied to otherworldly travels. If there ever was any shamanic feature in fairy tales, it pertained to nineteenth century collectors' sublimation, that is to a constructed idea of shamanism, deprived of experiential content. This discourse is valuable for every archaic source, supposedly hidden in the stories. Hence he claims that 'ancient 'clues' become nothing more (or less) than narrative devices without any direct relation to the world as it is experienced beyond' (p. 172).
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Papers by Francesca Matteoni
which their former identities disappeared in the magico-medical employments of their bodies. Blood, fat and bones were sought for by people as effective medicines or as protective charms. This paper aims to look at the survival of such traditions in nineteenth-century western Europe, discussing how a blend of learned notions and folk-beliefs nurtured the view of an untimely dead body as full of physical and spiritual usable powers.
KEYWORDS: blood; fat; bones; magic; execution; criminal corpse; executioner; epilepsy;
folk-medicine; blood-drinking; usnea; nineteenth-century Europe
Book Reviews by Francesca Matteoni