Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs
Publication Date
Summer 8-1-2023
Abstract
The focus of this thesis are two recent novels featuring witches: Chloé Delaume’s Les Sorcières de la République(The Witches of the Republic, 2016) and Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s The Mercies (2020). The first is a futuristic dystopia set in 2062, during the witch trial of the Sibyl of Cumae. The second is a work of historical fiction based on witch trial records and set in seventeenth-century Finnmark (Norway). Both are feminist novels, and both emphasize the political valence of the witch as a gendered figure. This figure emerged from the misogyny of early modern demonology but acquired its contemporary contours through second-wave feminism, which seized on the witch as an emblem of feminine power and solidarity against patriarchal oppression. Delaume’s Les Sorcières de la République and Hargrave’s The Mercies engage directly with this complex historical legacy, either by “correcting” the documentary record left behind by demonologists, or by underscoring the shortcomings of the political ideals embraced by second-wave feminists.
Keywords
Witch, Witchcrafts, Literature, History, Feminism, Politics
Document Type
Thesis
Language
English
Degree Name
Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Level of Degree
Masters
Department Name
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
First Committee Member (Chair)
Dr. Carmen Nocenteli
Second Committee Member
Dr. Francis Higginson
Third Committee Member
Dr. Michael A. Ryan
Recommended Citation
Gauthier, Mallaury Joëlle Marie. "Witchy Politics: Witches and Witchcraft as Political Tropes from Malleus Malleficarum (1487) to Les Sorcières de la République (2016) and The Mercies (2020)." (2023). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/fll_etds/165
Included in
Comparative Literature Commons, French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons, History Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons
