Willem de Blécourt [SEP] native language
Willem de Blécourt
Willem de Blécourt (full name: Wilhelmus Jacobus Christiaan de Blécourt) (born 29 December 1951) is a Dutch historical anthropologist specialising in the study of witchcraft and folk magic in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the 20th century. An Honorary Research Fellow at both the Huizinga Institute and the Meertens Institute, Amsterdam, de Blécourt is also a prolific author, having edited several books on the subject.
External links.
- Website Willem de Blécourt
- Meertens Institute
- Macmillan Publishers author
the heirs of the cunning people, they "have much more in common with the stereotypical images of witches in nineteenth-century popular culture; the very beings who were regarded as the natural enemies of the charmers and cunning people."
Legacy Historiography.
Whilst the historian Keith Thomas had touched on the subject of English popular magic in his "Religion and the Decline of Magic" (1971), in a 1994 article on the subject of the cunning folk, the historian Willem de Blécourt stated that the study of the