The Uses of Supernatural Power

By Gabor Klaniczay, Susan Singerman (translator), Karen Margolis (editor)

Book cover of The Uses of Supernatural Power: The Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe

Book description

This book of essays is concerned with aspects of religion, magic, and witchcraft in medieval and early-modern Europe, with particular reference to Central Europe. Drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological work including that of Elias, Geertz, Bakhtin, and Turner, the author gives special attention to the history of…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Uses of Supernatural Power as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Bruce McClelland

Author

Serious students of vampire folklore are aware that the motif is found all over Eastern and Central Europe. Gabor Klaniczay is a Hungarian historian whose research focuses on witches and other supernatural entities in the cultures of Austro-Hungary and its environs.

This book showed me so many things that I and other American readers get wrong. For example, most people believe that the “blood countess,” Erzebeta Bathory, drank the blood of local virgins, but Klaniczay shows that these reports were actually constructed to get her out of the way of an inheritance scheme. Klaniczay is also an expert on Central…

From Bruce's list on vampire and slayer folklore.