The World Bewitch'd

A rich literary tradition of witches, sorcerers, and wizards spans the gamut of genres, periods, and intended audiences throughout the Western world. From myths, through fairy tales, to “documentary accounts” of witch trials, the ancient Greeks, the Elizabethans, the Romantics, the Victorians, and contemporary poets and writers have all elaborated on the nature of witchcraft. Some of the most famous examples of (fictional) women and men who were said to possess extraordinary powers to alter reality, beguile and corrupt the innocent or the greedy, and frequently cause great hardship or evil include: Circe, Medea, Faust, the three witches in Macbeth, or the evil queen in Snow White. Most of them either reform or meet a well-deserved demise in a cautionary tale to readers of all ages. The witches who survive are the “white,” or good, witches, who, alas, are often not as powerful as the black magic women and men. It is only more recently that popular culture has begun to rehabilitate the “wicked witch” trope.