How Long to Read Desperate Magic

How Long Does it Take to Read Desperate Magic?

It takes the average reader 6 hours and 25 minutes to read Desperate Magic by Valerie A. Kivelson

Assuming a reading speed of 250 words per minute. Learn more

Description

In the courtrooms of seventeenth-century Russia, the great majority of those accused of witchcraft were male, in sharp contrast to the profile of accused witches across Catholic and Protestant Europe in the same period. While European courts targeted and executed overwhelmingly female suspects, often on charges of compacting with the devil, the tsars’ courts vigorously pursued men and some women accused of practicing more down-to-earth magic, using poetic spells and home-grown potions. Instead of Satanism or heresy, the primary concern in witchcraft testimony in Russia involved efforts to use magic to subvert, mitigate, or avenge the harsh conditions of patriarchy, serfdom, and social hierarchy. Broadly comparative and richly illustrated with color plates, Desperate Magic places the trials of witches in the context of early modern Russian law, religion, and society. Piecing together evidence from trial records to illuminate some of the central puzzles of Muscovite history, Kivelson explores the interplay among the testimony of accusers, the leading questions of the interrogators, and the confessions of the accused. Assembled, they create a picture of a shared moral vision of the world that crossed social divides. Because of the routine use of torture in extracting and shaping confessions, Kivelson addresses methodological and ideological questions about the Muscovite courts’ equation of pain and truth, questions with continuing resonance in the world today. Within a moral economy that paired unquestioned hierarchical inequities with expectations of reciprocity, magic and suspicions of magic emerged where those expectations were most egregiously violated. Witchcraft in Russia surfaces as one of the ways that oppression was contested by ordinary people scrambling to survive in a fiercely inequitable world. Masters and slaves, husbands and wives, and officers and soldiers alike believed there should be limits to exploitation and saw magic deployed at the junctures where hierarchical order veered into violent excess.

How long is Desperate Magic?

Desperate Magic by Valerie A. Kivelson is 376 pages long, and a total of 96,256 words.

This makes it 127% the length of the average book. It also has 118% more words than the average book.

How Long Does it Take to Read Desperate Magic Aloud?

The average oral reading speed is 183 words per minute. This means it takes 8 hours and 45 minutes to read Desperate Magic aloud.

What Reading Level is Desperate Magic?

Desperate Magic is suitable for students ages 12 and up.

Note that there may be other factors that effect this rating besides length that are not factored in on this page. This may include things like complex language or sensitive topics not suitable for students of certain ages.

When deciding what to show young students always use your best judgement and consult a professional.

Where Can I Buy Desperate Magic?

Desperate Magic by Valerie A. Kivelson is sold by several retailers and bookshops. However, Read Time works with Amazon to provide an easier way to purchase books.

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