The Witch and the Hysteric: The Monstrous Medieval in Benjamin Christensen's Häxan

Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 Swedish/Danish film Häxan (known under its English title as Witchcraft Through the Ages) has entranced, entertained, shocked, and puzzled audiences for nearly a century. The film mixes documentary with fantasy, history with theatrics, religion and science, the medieval pa...

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Główni autorzy: Doty, Alexander, Ingham, Patricia Clare
Format: Online
Język:angielski
Wydane: punctum books 2021
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Dostęp online:1004549
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author Doty, Alexander
Ingham, Patricia Clare
author_browse Doty, Alexander
Ingham, Patricia Clare
author_facet Doty, Alexander
Ingham, Patricia Clare
author_sort Doty, Alexander
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 Swedish/Danish film Häxan (known under its English title as Witchcraft Through the Ages) has entranced, entertained, shocked, and puzzled audiences for nearly a century. The film mixes documentary with fantasy, history with theatrics, religion and science, the medieval past and modern culture. This uncanny content is compounded by the film’s formal strangeness, a mixture of quasi-documentary with fictional episodes, illustrated lectures alongside docudrama recreations and dreamscapes. Is this a documentary, a horror flick, or both? In this chapbook, authors Doty and Ingham argue that the puzzle of Christensen’s Häxan might be unraveled by attending to the film’s provocative and paradoxical medievalism, its fantasmatic rendering of the witch as a medieval monster. Such monstrous medievalism, moreover, sheds considerable light on the politics of gender and culture once the witch is rendered a female figure in a time out-of-joint.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-393452025-02-13T04:37:13Z The Witch and the Hysteric: The Monstrous Medieval in Benjamin Christensen's Häxan Doty, Alexander Ingham, Patricia Clare film medieval studies horror cultural studies witchcraft thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AT Performing arts::ATF Films, cinema::ATFA Film history, theory or criticism Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 Swedish/Danish film Häxan (known under its English title as Witchcraft Through the Ages) has entranced, entertained, shocked, and puzzled audiences for nearly a century. The film mixes documentary with fantasy, history with theatrics, religion and science, the medieval past and modern culture. This uncanny content is compounded by the film’s formal strangeness, a mixture of quasi-documentary with fictional episodes, illustrated lectures alongside docudrama recreations and dreamscapes. Is this a documentary, a horror flick, or both? In this chapbook, authors Doty and Ingham argue that the puzzle of Christensen’s Häxan might be unraveled by attending to the film’s provocative and paradoxical medievalism, its fantasmatic rendering of the witch as a medieval monster. Such monstrous medievalism, moreover, sheds considerable light on the politics of gender and culture once the witch is rendered a female figure in a time out-of-joint. 2021-02-10T12:58:18Z 2019-03-26 23:55 2020-01-23 14:09:07 2020-04-01T10:43:02Z 2014 book 1004549 OCN: 945783310 http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25546 9780692230152 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/39345 eng open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25546/1/1004549.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25546/1/1004549.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25546/1/1004549.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25546/1/1004549.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25546/1/1004549.pdf punctum books 10.21983/P3.0074.1.00 10.21983/P3.0074.1.00 12970da4-0116-4486-b8be-fc9756703ab1 9780692230152 ScholarLed 84 Brooklyn, NY open access
spellingShingle film
medieval studies
horror
cultural studies
witchcraft
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AT Performing arts::ATF Films, cinema::ATFA Film history, theory or criticism
Doty, Alexander
Ingham, Patricia Clare
The Witch and the Hysteric: The Monstrous Medieval in Benjamin Christensen's Häxan
title The Witch and the Hysteric: The Monstrous Medieval in Benjamin Christensen's Häxan
title_full The Witch and the Hysteric: The Monstrous Medieval in Benjamin Christensen's Häxan
title_fullStr The Witch and the Hysteric: The Monstrous Medieval in Benjamin Christensen's Häxan
title_full_unstemmed The Witch and the Hysteric: The Monstrous Medieval in Benjamin Christensen's Häxan
title_short The Witch and the Hysteric: The Monstrous Medieval in Benjamin Christensen's Häxan
title_sort witch and the hysteric the monstrous medieval in benjamin christensen s haxan
topic film
medieval studies
horror
cultural studies
witchcraft
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AT Performing arts::ATF Films, cinema::ATFA Film history, theory or criticism
topic_facet film
medieval studies
horror
cultural studies
witchcraft
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AT Performing arts::ATF Films, cinema::ATFA Film history, theory or criticism
url 1004549
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