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2025-07-11
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info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), 2025
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Resumen
The Salem witchcraft crisis in 1692 was a historical event with remarkable social, political, and religious repercussions which affected the future and the formation of what would be the new American postcolonial society. There are many documents and manuscripts of this episode which are preserved in the archives thanks to official and personal accounts written by the very participants involved —judges, accusers, accused, and witnesses.
Hence, the Salem witchcraft delusion is one of the best recorded events of Colonial America. Some 19th Century American authors relied on these historical records to create their fictions with the intention to give their literature a genuine “American” topic. Meanwhile, in Great Britain, Victorian authors like Elizabeth Gaskell engaged with Gothic themes also based on historical events so as to put into context their present social and religious conflicts. This dissertation aims at demonstrating how the Salem trials of the 17th century supplied Anglo-American writers of the 19th century with an appropriate subject-matter for their fictions, which in turn
allowed them to understand their contemporary historical, social, and religious background.
To carry out this study, the fictions chosen will be John Neal’s Rachel Dyer (1828), Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Giles Corey of the Salem Farms (1868), and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Lois the Witch (1859). Each of these authors follows his/her own approach to shape their stories which will be deeply analyzed with the conventions of historical fiction in mind. Characters and events, both fictional and real, will also be explored through a gender perspective, taking into consideration the concept of “otherness,” and how they were historically discriminated and/or used as scapegoats, and subsequently, how they are portrayed in those terms in the fictions studied. The conclusions achieved in this dissertation will prove that, for these authors, it is a must to learn from history to avoid repeating past mistakes in the present and in the future.
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Palabras clave
Salem trials, witch-hunts, Rachel Dyer, The House of the Seven Gables, Giles Corey of the Salem Farms, Lois the Witch
Citación
González Criado, Almudena. Trabajo Fin de Máster: "Salem 1692 and after: 17th Century witchcraft in 19th Century Anglo-American historical fiction". Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), 2025
Centro
Facultad de Filología
Departamento
Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas