Alhaj Yūsuf Ṣāliḥ Ajura
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300207118
- eISBN:
- 9780300258202
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300207118.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This chapter discusses the poem “Afa ZaŋunpaƔ Nyu BuƔli,” which covers witches, witch hunters, and exorcism that assumed the name of nana. It retells the story of an elderly Ashanti woman who arrived ...
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This chapter discusses the poem “Afa ZaŋunpaƔ Nyu BuƔli,” which covers witches, witch hunters, and exorcism that assumed the name of nana. It retells the story of an elderly Ashanti woman who arrived in Tamale claiming to hunt down witches and exorcise them. It also mentions how witch hunters and their supporters would subject the accused elderly women to beatings and claim to exorcise them by giving them a potion to drink and shaving their heads. The chapter details how Afa Ajura objected and mounted spirited attacks on several fronts of the nana business, including on the local chiefs and the clerics. It cites Afa Ajura's passing of a juristic verdict for anyone who drinks the exorcist potion: that two-month fasting becomes obligatory.Less
This chapter discusses the poem “Afa ZaŋunpaƔ Nyu BuƔli,” which covers witches, witch hunters, and exorcism that assumed the name of nana. It retells the story of an elderly Ashanti woman who arrived in Tamale claiming to hunt down witches and exorcise them. It also mentions how witch hunters and their supporters would subject the accused elderly women to beatings and claim to exorcise them by giving them a potion to drink and shaving their heads. The chapter details how Afa Ajura objected and mounted spirited attacks on several fronts of the nana business, including on the local chiefs and the clerics. It cites Afa Ajura's passing of a juristic verdict for anyone who drinks the exorcist potion: that two-month fasting becomes obligatory.
Ian Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781906733513
- eISBN:
- 9781800342033
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781906733513.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Witchfinder General (1968), known as The Conqueror Worm in America, was directed by Michael Reeves and occupies a unique place in British cinema. Equally praised and vilified, the film fictionalizes ...
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Witchfinder General (1968), known as The Conqueror Worm in America, was directed by Michael Reeves and occupies a unique place in British cinema. Equally praised and vilified, the film fictionalizes the exploits of Matthew Hopkins, a prolific, real-life ‘witch hunter’, during the English Civil War. For critic Mark Kermode, the release proved to be ‘the single most significant horror film produced in the United Kingdom in the 1960s’, while playwright Alan Bennett called the work ‘the most persistently sadistic and rotten film I've ever seen’. Steadily gaining a cult reputation, unimpeded by the director's death just months after the film's release, the film is now treated as a landmark, though problematic, accomplishment, as it exists in a number of recut, retitled, and rescored versions. This in-depth study positions the film within the history of horror and discusses its importance as a British and heritage film. It also considers the inheritance of Hopkins, the script's relationship to the novel by Ronald Bassett, and the iconic persona of the film's star, Vincent Price. The author conducts close textual readings of specific scenes and explores the film's various contexts, from the creation of the X certificate and the tradition of Hammer gothic, to the influence on Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and the ‘torture porn’ of twenty-first-century horror.Less
Witchfinder General (1968), known as The Conqueror Worm in America, was directed by Michael Reeves and occupies a unique place in British cinema. Equally praised and vilified, the film fictionalizes the exploits of Matthew Hopkins, a prolific, real-life ‘witch hunter’, during the English Civil War. For critic Mark Kermode, the release proved to be ‘the single most significant horror film produced in the United Kingdom in the 1960s’, while playwright Alan Bennett called the work ‘the most persistently sadistic and rotten film I've ever seen’. Steadily gaining a cult reputation, unimpeded by the director's death just months after the film's release, the film is now treated as a landmark, though problematic, accomplishment, as it exists in a number of recut, retitled, and rescored versions. This in-depth study positions the film within the history of horror and discusses its importance as a British and heritage film. It also considers the inheritance of Hopkins, the script's relationship to the novel by Ronald Bassett, and the iconic persona of the film's star, Vincent Price. The author conducts close textual readings of specific scenes and explores the film's various contexts, from the creation of the X certificate and the tradition of Hammer gothic, to the influence on Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and the ‘torture porn’ of twenty-first-century horror.
