In this Zoom talk, Dr Alex Carabine will explore the folklore, history and later depictions of witchcraft, with a focus on Gothic literature and film
Everyone knows the witch. Her green skin and warts give her away. Or perhaps you have seen her in the woods, dancing in a circle after having flown in on her broom? Maybe your signature is next to hers in the Devil’s book? Then again, your witch might be a woman with flowing hair and velvet dress, gathering dried flowers and igniting a candle with a breath. Your witch could even be a man who can sour butter with a glance – or a youth with black eyeliner carrying a grimoire in their school bag…
Everyone knows the witch. Yet throughout history the witch has been a slippery, shapeshifting figure. If they can appear so different – in so many disparate forms – how are we apparently able to identify them so easily? What do all of these depictions of witches have in common? And how was the malevolent hag of the late-medieval era transformed into the supernatural feminist icon we might recognise today? Join Dr Alex Carabine as she explores the folkloric origins of witches, their pacts with the Devil, the feminist reclamation of the figure, and their ongoing transformation through Gothic literature and film.
In this illustrated Zoom talk, Alex will discuss the Malleus Maleficarum and its femicidal origins, as well as its impact on the Pendle and Salem witch trials. From these historic underpinnings we will move into literature to consider the transformation of the witch in narratives like Shakespeare’s Macbeth and various nineteenth century Gothic novels. As the twentieth century progressed, we will note how the witch was domesticated through films like I Married a Witchand Bell, Book and Candle and why, in the wake of the World Wars, this domestication was considered so necessary. As the century waned and the Millenium neared, we will investigate the witch’s feminist reclamation through the soft Gothic sisterhood of Practical Magic and shows like Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, in the twenty-first century, the witch is undergoing another metamorphosis: Robert Eggers took her back to her Satanic roots in the The VVitch, while Anna Biller’s The Love Witch acts as a feminist critique of contemporary witchcraft itself.
The witch is a multivalent symbol through which we can examine the boundaries of power and gender. But why is the witch so prevalent across history, and who is safe to be othered? Come to this lecture and find out if you are as familiar with the witch as you think you are.
About the Speaker
At the turn of the Millenium Dr Alex Carabine was a teenage witch – she had the pentacle, the tarot deck, and the bad attitude. Now, she has a PhD in Gothic literature, specifically on the influence of medieval culture on Gothic narratives in the nineteenth century. ‘Seasons of the Witch’ is taken a from a book she is writing on the history of the Gothic, which fuses academic rigour with entertaining literary analysis aimed at the general reader. Alex has lectured at the University of Liverpool, supervised dissertations at Oxford University, and runs online lectures, workshops and events through her freelance business, Gothic University.
Your curator and host for this event will be the author Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. His latest book is All the Fear of the Fair (pub. Oct 2025) the second anthology he’s edited for the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com
Don’t worry if you can’t make the live event on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.
[Image: http://zidanio.livejournal.com/22246.html, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
