Collins Memorial Library: ENGL 432: Literature &amp; Magic: Romance: Primary &amp; Historical Sources

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Searching for Literary Works by Author/Title

Searching Primo for a novel or play, or for all the works by a specific author, is pretty straightforward:

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
Condé, Maryse
If you need a specific edition, include the publisher in a keyword search

Scholarly and critical editions will typically present and discuss variant versions of a text; provide historical, cultural and linguistic context; and delineate the history of scholarly approaches to that text. Most scholarly editions will have an editor (or editors) and will be published by a university press.

The Winter's Tale: text and contexts by William Shakespeare; Mario DiGangi (Editor)
Call Number: PR2839.A2 D53 2008 Print Books
ISBN: 9780312167042
Publication Date: 2008
More than just the play, this editon of Shakespeare's Winter's Tale contains five sets of thematically arranged primary documents and illustrations which help facilitate your abiity to take more than one approach to interpreting Shakespeare.

Primary Source Collections

Thematic anthologies (print or ebook format) provide a way to conduct a broader survey of available primary source materials.

Defining Magic: a reader by Bernd-Christian Otto; Michael Stausberg
Call Number: BF1589 .D48 2013 Print Books
ISBN: 9781908049797
Publication Date: 2014
Magic has been an important term in Western history and continues to be an essential topic in the modern academic study of religion, anthropology, sociology, and cultural history. Defining Magic is the first volume to assemble key texts that aim at determining the nature of magic, establish its boundaries and key features, and explain its working.
European Magic and Witchcraft: a reader by Martha Rampton (Editor)
Call Number: BF1584.E9 E97 2018 Print Books
ISBN: 9781442634213
Publication Date: 2018
This collection provides readers with a broad view of how magic was understood through the medieval and early modern eras. In over 80 readings presented chronologically, Rampton demonstrates how understandings of and reactions toward magic changed and developed over time, and how these ideas were influenced by various factors such as religion, science, and law.
The Witchcraft Sourcebook by Brian P. Levack (Editor)
Call Number: BF1566 .W58 2015 Print Books
ISBN: 9781317503569
Publication Date: 2015
A fascinating collection of documents that illustrates the development of ideas about witchcraft from ancient times to the eighteenth century. This second edition includes an extended section on the witch trials in England, Scotland and New England, fully revised and updated introductions to the sources to include the latest scholarship and a short bibliography at the end of each introduction to guide further reading.

Primary Sources Online

Digital Scriptorium
The Digital Scriptorium holds digital images of medieval manuscripts from libraries throughout the United States.
Internet Medieval Sourcebook
A large collection of primary sources (excerpts and full texts) collected by medievalist Paul Halsall and hosted by Fordham University. A bar on the left lists the main subject headings of the sourcebook.
EuroDocs
Online sources for the study of European history. Organized by country.
Digital Witchcraft Collection
Cornell University Libraries has digitized 104 titles (out of a collection of over 3,000) in its Early Modern Europe Witchcraft Collection.
Digital Library of the Caribbean
A cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. Do a search on Haiti or use the country search to get numerous primary documents covering the history of Haiti from colonial time to the present.
Obeah Histories
Thousands of people in the Caribbean have been subject to prosecution for their religious and spiritual healing practice, since the first law against obeah was passed in Jamaica during slavery, until the recent past. This website tells some of their stories, explains the legal context of the laws under which they were prosecuted, and directs interested readers to where they might find out more.
Caribbean Religious Trials
This website presents information about selected trials for religious crimes held in the Caribbean between the 1760s and the 1980s. At present about 800 cases can be viewed, mostly from Jamaica, with a significant number from Trinidad as well. Cases were collected from newspapers, especially the digitized version of The Gleaner and the microfilmed Port of Spain Gazette, from the Colonial Office files of the UK National Archives, and from many other sources.