Humanities Core Course, Week One: The Salem Witchcraft Trials

Michael P. Clark
Department of English and Comparative Literature
535 ADMIN, Office Hours by appointment: 824-6503
 
 

I. Theme for the Year: Laws and Orders--Humanities and the Regulation of Society
 

A. Law, Order, Society and a thesis: Society is regulated by connecting the visible characteristics of Order to the invisible principles of Law.

B. The role of the Humanities

 II. Theme for the Quarter: Against the Law: Conspiracy, Punishment, Resistance
 
1. Resistance
2. Punishment
3. Conspiracy
 III. The Salem Witchcraft Trials and the Regulation of Society
 
A. Salem as symbol: the witch-hunt [Matteson]
1. the conspiracy of power: Arthur Miller, The Crucible, preface and commentary:[Miller]

2. the individual vs. society: Nicholas Hytner (Director of the film, from The Crucible Screenplay [New York: Penguin, 1966])[Hytner]

3. a crisis of belief: Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem [Hansen]
 


 
 

 B. Salem as Historical Event: Sources for Research
 (Core Writer’s Handbook, 127-29)

  [Hathorne]

 
  1. primary sources [Pudeator] [Wonders] 2. secondary sources

3. "non-traditional" sources

a. The Internet

"Famous Trials" (Prof. Doug Linder, U. of Missouri School of Law)

"Salem Witch Trials:  Documentary Archive and Transcription Project" (University of Virginia).  See also the complete Salem transcripts (University of Virginia Electronic Text Center.)
 

b. Art and Popular Myth: What didn't happen at Salem--The Crucible [Fact vs. Fiction]
 
 
 


 
 

IV. What Happened at Salem (Narrative and Information)

A. The Law (Statutes)

B. Numbers (Numbers)

C. Chronology [NewChron.html]
 
 
 


 
 

 V. The Trials

A. The Process

B. Confessions: Tituba and Abigail Hobbs Tituba

C. Conspiracy: George Burroughs

D. Resistance and Punishment: Susannah Martin Martin Bio
 
 

 (Lt. Gov. of Mass. William Stoughton, Chief Justice at Salem)
 
 

VI.  Causes of the Salem Witchcraft Trials:  "Causal Explanation is Interpretation" (Writer's Handbook 131-40)

 
 
 

A. Principle of sufficient reason[Sufficient.html]
B. The Post Hoc Fallacy
C. Necessary Causes and Multiple Causes [BurnTown.html]
D. Explanatory Overdetermination [Overdeterm.html]
E. Explanatory Interests and Interpretive Assumptions

 

VI. Analyzing causal arguments
 

A. Two interpretations of the Salem Trials and their causal explanations

 

Miller ("traditional" interp.)

(social causes)

1. No serious witchcraft

2. Afflicted were lying, frauds

3. Conspiracy of power, repression of individuality
 

4. Mass hysteria, superstition
 

5. Aberration
Hansen

(psychological causes) 

1. folk magic, power of suggestion

2. hysteria

3. ministers resisted trials, family and friends appealed, progressive people skeptical

4. Social order based on scriptural Law; popular culture believed in witchcraft

5. Part of a long widespread tradition

 
 

 
 

B. The Causal Claims of Traditional Interpretations:

The Crucible as causal argument [Hogarth.html]   1. No witchcraft

2. Afflicted were lying, frauds

3. Conspiracy of power, repression of individuality

4. Mass hysteria, superstition

5. Aberration

  C. Causal Claims of Chadwick Hansen's Witchcraft at Salem (1969)
 
 
    1. folk magic, power of suggestion

2. hysteria [definition]

3. ministers resisted trials, family and friends appealed, progressive people skeptical


 
4. Social order based on scriptural Law-- [statutes]; popular culture believed in witchcraft [Kiss]; theology [stomp]
 
5. Part of a long widespread tradition
 
 
  D. Some Contemporary Causal Alternatives from the Discovery Task  

 [causes.html]

1. Somatic

2. Feminist [MirrorDev.html]

3. Socio-economic