History of Crossroads in Early Modern Culture
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A01=Bill Angus
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Author_Bill Angus
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Crossroads
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early modern
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gallows
gods
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music
outcast burial
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ritual
Shakespeare
softlaunch
transformative magic
Product details
- ISBN 9781474499835
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 15 Nov 2023
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Tracks the history of concepts and practices associated with the physical crossroads in the early modern period
Breaks new ground in the area of literary geography and enhances the historical understanding of the place of the crossroads in literary and cultural discourse
Unifies various discourses of early modern culture and subjectivity in terms of the experience and understanding of the crossroads
Locates issues around the ideology and experience of the road in one specific culturally significant place
Focusing on the crossroads in the early modern period, this book deals with the literature and history of the physical crossroads: it's magical and religious encounters, rituals of transformation, binding of undesirable spirits, siting of gallows, associations with music, and links to ancient cosmology. Physical crossroads have been culturally vital sites where forces human, demonic and divine were felt to converge. Crossroads have seemed to render the boundaries between these spheres negotiable, subject to certain artifice and timing. They gave access to gods and facilitated deals with devils, they were potent sites for rituals intended to influence lovers or harm enemies and provided both a dramatic stage for communal activities and a burial ground for the unwanted dead cast out in ceremonies of the night.
Bill Angus is pursuing a rich and varied life in New Zealand. Previous publications include Reading the River in Shakespeare’s Britain (2024) and Reading the Road, from Shakespeare’s Crossways to Bunyan’s Highways (2019) both co-edited with Lisa Hopkins and published by Edinburgh University Press. His latest book, Divorcing Jesus (2025) maps a moral and intellectual path from the ruins of Christianity towards the ideal of Atheism.
