A family of witches
A spinning pig, uncanny knitting and magical seduction come up in a witch trial of Mary Sutton. Emma Whipday unpicks the language used to accuse her of magic.
An 8-year-old who condemns his own mother to execution in 1582: New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday, who researches Renaissance literature at Newcastle University, has been reading witch trial records from Elizabethan and Jacobean England to explore how they depict single mothers. And she finds chilling echoes of their language in newspaper articles in our own times.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Emma Whipday is a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ/AHRC New Generation Thinker 2022 on the scheme which puts research on the radio. You can find her sharing her thoughts on Free Thinking episodes about Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare, Cross-dressing, Step-mothers, and Tudor families.
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- Wed 5 Apr 2023 22:45Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 3
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