The Nightmare Experience,Sleep Paralysis,and Witchcraft Accusations

Witch-trial records, and other early-modern writings on witchcraft, reveal that in various European societies people complained of being physically oppressed at night by witches and other supernatural beings, the victims of these nocturnal assaults describing a similar set of symptoms. Contemporary English authors termed the experience the "mare" or "nightmare." In the twentieth century, it has been identified as a manifestation of "sleep paralysis." Medical studies and surveys of the condition help us make better sense of the historical accounts, while an awareness of the historical evidence illuminates modern reports of sleep paralysis experiences. [1]     

Débats autour de l'école

Altschull, E., Le Voile contre l'école (Seuil, 1995), 278 pp., 110F., ISBN 2 02 022748 7 Soubré, L, l‘Ecole sous pressions (Stock, 1995) 241 pp., 110F, ISBN 2 234 04508 8.     

Aspects of the sugar-refining industry from the 16th to the 19th century

This paper considers some aspects of the sugar-refining industry in Britain from the 16th to the 19th century. The pottery types involved are defined, and illustrated by examples from different parts of the country. The method of manufacturing sugar loaves is discussed, and the technology is placed in a wider context, drawing upon archaeological and historical evidence from the Old and New Worlds.     

Jean-Jacques Rousseau on women and citizenship

The aim of this article is to shed light on the eighteenth-century Italian reflection on luxury and consumption in a comparative perspective, clarifying, on the one hand, the complex significance that it assumed and, on the other, the specificity of the Italian context, marked by the immense political value of the debate on the subject. In particular this objective will be pursued through the analysis of specific cases among the many offered by the Italian context and through different research strands. These are: the debate on the evaluation of luxury; the transition from the notion of luxury to that of consumption; and the discussion on luxury and consumption in the revolutionary context. This article intends to outline the particular contribution made by Italian thought, which conveyed a multifaceted discourse of social reform, critique and understanding built on more even foundations, and at the same time to clarify what contribution can be made to current historiography by the study of this theme within eighteenth-century Italy.     

Patagonian Cinnamon and Pepper: Blending Geography in Alonso de Ovalle’s Tabula Geographica Regni Chile (1646)

ABSTRACT

The context and conditions under which early modern Europeans created images and maps that blended Asian and American geographies have recently received the attention of scholars. In this article I explore an example of this practice in the Chilean Jesuit Alonso de Ovalle’s mapping of Asian spices as it affected the southern region of his Tabula geographica regni Chile (Rome, 1646). I examine Ovalle’s inclusion of cinnamon and pepper in the Patagonian landscape as a persuasive allusion to the crucial role of the Strait of Magellan in his proposed revision of the trade route of the Spanish galleons.