Heidi Breuer teaches at California State University, San Marcos

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter One: "Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?": An Introduction to Medieval and Early Modern Magic

Chapter Two: Gender-Blending: Transformative Power in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Literature

Chapter Three: From Rags to Riches, Or the Step-Mother's Revenge: Transformative Power in Late Medieval Arthurian Romances

Chapter Four: The Lady is a Hag: Three Writers and the Transformation of Magic in Sixteenth-Century England

Chapter Five: Hags on Film: Contemporary Echoes of the Early Modern Wicked Witch

Notes

Bibliography

Index

How did the witch become wicked? This is the central question of Crafting the Witch, which documents and analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures that occurred in Arthurian romance as it developed from its earliest continental manifestations in the twelfth century to its flowering in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England.