A History of Crossroads in Early Modern Culture

Focusing on the crossroads in the early modern period, this book deals with the literature and history of the physical crossroads: its magical and religious encounters, rituals of transformation, binding of undesirable spirits, siting of gallows, associations with music and links to ancient cosmology. Physical crossroads have been culturally vital sites where forces human, demonic and divine were felt to converge. Crossroads have seemed to render the boundaries between these spheres negotiable, subject to certain artifice and timing. They gave access to gods and facilitated deals with devils, they were potent sites for rituals intended to influence lovers or harm enemies and provided both a dramatic stage for communal activities and a burial ground for the unwanted dead cast out in ceremonies of the night. Bill Angus is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at Massey University, New Zealand