Literary notes about sorcery (AI summary)
The term "sorcery" in literature has served as a multifaceted symbol, oscillating between the literal and the metaphorical across genres and epochs. In tragedies like Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, it is invoked amid intrigue and suspicion ([1], [2]), while in historical accounts by Mackay it becomes a charge tied to moral and legal transgressions ([3], [4], [5]). Meanwhile, in fairy tales—most notably in Andersen’s works—it is both an explanation for unexplainable events and a marker of wickedness or mystery ([6], [7], [8], [9], [10]). Anthropological and religious studies, such as Frazer’s The Golden Bough, examine sorcery within a framework of positive magic versus taboo, attributing it both creative and prohibitive qualities ([11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]). Other texts, from Dostoyevsky to Kipling and Pushkin, further demonstrate how sorcery can represent both concrete manipulation of unseen forces and complex metaphors for personal and societal influence ([17], [18], [19]).
- I do suspect there hath been some sorcery Us'd on the duchess.
— from The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster - Sorcery!
— from The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster - The offences laid to his charge were, sorcery, sodomy, and murder.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay - One, named Kuhlmann, was burned alive at Moscow, in 1684, on a charge of sorcery.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay - After the death of Margaret he was imprisoned at Brussels, on a charge of sorcery.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay - They believed it to be some new sorcery of their wicked step-mother.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. Andersen - He imagined that some new sorcery was at work.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. Andersen - Then the robbers knew that this must be the work of an evil spirit or some secret sorcery, and, in a terrible fright, they ran hastily from the spot.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. Andersen - She sits there with her ugly sorcery.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. Andersen - And the Viking woman wrote Runic characters against sorcery and spells of sickness, and threw them over the wretched child; but they did no good.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. Andersen - In various parts of France the charred log is thought to guard the house against sorcery as well as against lightning.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer - But perhaps the most precious of all the virtues of mistletoe is that it affords efficient protection against sorcery and witchcraft.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer - Of that fallacy, sorcery is the positive, and taboo the negative pole.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer - The aim of positive magic or sorcery is to produce a desired event; the aim of negative magic or taboo is to avoid an undesirable one.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer - In short, those negative precepts which we call taboo are just as vain and futile as those positive precepts which we call sorcery.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer - Positive magic or sorcery says, “Do this in order that so and so may happen.”
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer - He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession!
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - By night prepared for sorcery, And in the bathroom did command To lay two covers secretly.
— from Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin - But this is sorcery!' said the lama.
— from Kim by Rudyard Kipling