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The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present is a dense but fascinating academic book. I mistakenly thought, based on the title, it would only discuss the history of folklore around the witch figure as we would recognize it in the modern European and North American sense, but I was pleasantly surprised. In this ambitious tome, historian Ronald Hutton goes a nearly global overview of the entire concept of magic and how it was viewed, practiced, and vilified, from antiquity to the early modern period.

This is definitely not a quick read, but I learned so much and took copious notes despite folklore not being overtly relevant to any research interest of mine. I mainly came to this book because I was curious about the history behind a lot of common supernatural concepts (and as an avid DND player, I sure learned the roots of various familiar fantasy fiction tropes!), but was surprised how relevant the information was to any serious student of history, particularly the chapters about the European witch trials. Since folklore and the study of witchcraft is far removed from my own academic experience, I really can't speak to the validity of Hutton's categorical arguments, nor his criticisms of other scholars in the field. However, he presented his case in a straightforward manner and it seemed believable to me. I was reading The Witch as an inspiration point for my own fantasy fiction ideas, so I care less about the accuracy of the data than I perhaps normally would, but even so the book feels exhaustively researched and careful to consider perspectives the world over and not take on a Eurocentric lens. (Hutton is, in fact, highly critical of previous scholars who have done such things.)

I do wish a few more regions were represented in the overview. Despite claiming to do a full global survey, Hutton's data contains almost no examples from Russia, nor the Middle East after the rise of Islam. Perhaps this simply reflects a dearth of English-speaking scholarship on the topic, but as these are the two regions I've most focused on in my own academic work, I likely noticed their omission more than the average reader would. I also wondered a lot about how medieval European perception of Islam and Muslims due to the Crusades might have played into perception of witches at the time of the witch trials. Moral panic and fear of the "other" seemed to be a major factor for their occurrence, and many of them happened concurrently to the Crusades. In his theory of Orientalism, Edward Said argues Western fears of the Islamic "other" date back to the Crusades and fuel negative stereotypes about Islam and Muslims to this day. As such, I wondered if there was any evidence of overlap in the medieval data about the witch trials that might point to any fear of Islamic influence as a driving force of this Satanic witchcraft so much of Europe became obsessed with at the time. If there is, Hutton does not address it, and that's another gap in the research that is perhaps worth exploring.

All in all, however, The Witch is a stunning masterpiece of academic literature that is both useful to a scholar of the field and engaging enough to hold a layperson's interest. I'm glad I spent a lot of time with it this Halloween season.

I've become interested this month about witch trials, and the resulting deaths particularly of women.