مجلة أبحاث

Witches’ Hunt For Social Retribution: A Shift In Literary Perspective

Auteurs : Allal Sabrine Djaouhar . Abdelhakem Slimane . Youcef Zakaria Mohy Eddine .

Résumé

Witches long served as a symbolic manifestation of evil and malice. Through ill-founded claims of witchcraft against women wrongly accused by the medieval church; or in their literary representation as wicked, ugly creatures seeking destruction and ill-fate; such perspectives are ubiquitous in their presence and the deeply-rooted schemata in the collective unconscious of man; making them stand as culture-dependent archetypes; hence, flexible, such is human nature, bound to change. This research paper aims to explore the shift of the witch archetype by examining major literary works. From traditional views on dark-spirited witches as represented in classical and medieval works, transitioning to enchanting, but equally malicious creatures in Romantic literature and finally, contemporary representations that reinvented the witch to vindicate all women who have been historically and literarily misrepresented, or silenced.

Mots clés

Witches ; Culture ; Archetype ; Literature ; Social Retribution