Romantismo, Paganismo e Bruxaria: a obra La Sorcière de Jules Michelet como precursora da Wicca, a Bruxaria Moderna

Abstract

The work La Sorcière was written in 1862 by the French historian Jules Michelet and deals with the theme of witchcraft in Europe. The work seeks to contemplate from the creation of the figure of the sorceress to a mass persecution promoted by the inquisition. Written in about two months, amid the romantic movement and in an era of interchange between literature and history, La Sorcière presents a romantic conception of the concretization of magical phenomena and witchcraft as a belief of popular resistance to the clergy and a nobility. Guided by a literary aesthetic close to the novel and with a pedagogical concern; The work turns out to be precursory of the notion of an organized cult of witchcraft like rebellion and "anti-religion". We will try to demonstrate how Michelet's romantic and pedagogical aesthetic was responsible for the idea of witchcraft as a permanence of European paganism. This idea of permanence and rebellion is responsible for practical practices of witchcraft and neopaganism. We will try, therefore, to demonstrate that Michelet can be considered, through his work, one of the forerunners of Wicca, a modern witchery. For this we will use the theories of the Aesthetics of the Reception of Jauss and the Theory of Esthetic Effect of Iser, emphasizing the last one.