Love, Anger and Envy: Emotions and the early Reformation

Annual Aylmer Lecture

Research

My first book, The Holy Household. Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg argued that the Reformation developed a theology of gender. Its attraction lay in its offer of the vision of a ‘holy household’ where the roles of men and women were clearly distinct.

Oedipus and the Devil, my second book, ranges through the literary culture of the sixteenth century to the use of psychoanalysis in studying witchcraft.

For Witch Craze I undertook four archivally-based case studies of witch hunting in southern Germany. This book argues that what powered the witch craze was a set of fears about fertility in the human and the natural world. The study encompasses areas of human experience that often elude the historical record, realms such as fantasy, envy and terror. A new book, The Witch in the Western Imagination, (forthcoming, University of Virginia Press 2012) explores images of witches and witchcraft in art and literature.

I am currently writing a biography of Martin Luther.

Publications (selection)

The Witch in the Western Imagination, University of Virginia Press, 2012

Witch Craze, Yale, 2004; paperback 2006, Hexenwahn, C.H.Beck 2007

Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe, Routledge 1994 (hb and pb); Ödipus und der Teufel. Körper und Psyche in der Frühen Neuzeit, Fischer  1995).

The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg, Oxford University Press, 1989 (hb and pb); Das fromme Haus. Frauen und Moral in der Reformation, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 1995.)

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the Foyer of the Berrick Saul Building