For further exploration of the course topics, the following optional readings may be utilized.
On Witches
Context
Briggs, Robin. Witches & Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. Penguin Books, 1998. ISBN: 9780140144383.
Gibson, Marion. “Witchcraft in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.” Chapter 2 in Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550 –1750. Cornell University Press, 2003, pp. 28–36. ISBN: 9780801488740.
Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. 3rd ed. Routledge, 2006. ISBN: 9780582419018. [Preview with Google Books]
MacFarlane, Alan. “Map 9: Cross-village Accusations at the Assize Courts.” In Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study. 2nd ed. Routledge, 1999. ISBN: 9780415196123. [Preview with Google Books]
Demos, John Putnam. “Map of Home-Lots in Easthampton, Long Island, ca. 1658.” In Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780195174830. [Preview with Google Books]
———. “Map of Home-Lots in Springfield, Mass., ca. 1651.” In Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780195174830. [Preview with Google Books]
———. “Map of Home-Lots in Marblehead, Mass., ca. 1650.” In Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780195174830. [Preview with Google Books]
———. “Map of Home-Lots in Easthampton, Long Island, ca. 1658.” In Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780195174830. [Preview with Google Books]
———. Tables 2–4, 11–3, and 15–8 in Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780195174830. [Preview with Google Books]
Shakespeare
Wills, Gary. Witches & Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Oxford University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780195102901. [Preview with Google Books]
Willis, Deborah. Malevolent Nature: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Cornell University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780801481949. [Preview with Google Books]
Stallybrass, Peter. “Macbeth and Witchcraft.” Chapter 9 in Focus on Macbeth. Edited by John Russell Brown. Routledge, 2010. ISBN: 9780415612173. [Preview with Google Books]
Purcell
Walking, Andrew R. “Political Allegory in Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas’.” Music & Letters 76, no. 4 (1995): 540–71.
Harris, Ellen T. Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780193152526.
Verdi
Schmidgall, Gary. Literature as Opera. Oxford University Press, 1977. ISBN: 9780195022131.
Rosen, David, and Andrew Porter, eds. Verdi’s Macbeth: A Sourcebook. W. W. Norton & Company, 1984. ISBN: 9780393950731.
Budden, Julian. “Macbeth.” Chapter 12 in The Operas of Verdi. Vol. 1, From Oberto to Rigoletto. Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780198162612.
Albright, Daniel. Musicking Shakespeare: A Conflict of Theatres. BOYE6, 2007, pp. 117–91. ISBN: 9781580462556. [Preview with Google Books]
On Spiritualism
Context
Crowe, Catherine. The Night Side of Nature, or Ghosts and Ghost Seers. The Classics.us, 2013. ISBN: 9781230351841.
Blum, Deborah. Ghost Hunters: William James and the Hunt for Scientific Proof of Life after Death. Penguin Books, 2007. ISBN: 9780143038955. [Preview with Google Books]
Owen, Alex. “Culture and the Occult at the Fin de Siècle.” Chapter 1 in The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern. University of Chicago Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780226642048. [Preview with Google Books]
James
James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. 2nd ed. Edited by Deborah Esch and Jonathan Warren. W. W. Norton & Company, 1999. ISBN: 9780393959048. [Preview with Google Books]
Britten
Howard, Patricia, ed. Benjamin Britten: The Turn of the Screw. Cambridge University Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780521283564. [Preview with Google Books]
Seymour, Claire. The Operas of Benjamin Britten: Expression and Evasion. BOYE6, 2007. ISBN: 9781843833147.