ABSTRACT This article examines the transmission of the changeling motif—a child replaced by a demonic double—in medieval hagiographic literature. While scholars have identified changeling legends in the apocryphal Vitae of SS. Stephen, Lawrence, and Bartholomew, the article proposes the inclusion of the fourteenth-century Middle Low German poem Zeno within the medieval changeling corpus. The Zeno narrative demonstrates how changeling motifs migrated from saints’ lives to chivalric romance while preserving core narrative structures. The article conceptualizes this appropriation of hagiographic narrative conventions for secular audiences as the “hagiographesque.” It further traces the origins of medieval changeling hagiography to twelfth-century central Italy and explores the relationship between written texts and oral tradition. Drawing on manuscript, iconographic, and folkloric evidence, it shows how hagiographically influenced child-substitution narratives were transmitted, adapted, and reinterpreted across centuries, including in the form of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European ballads and prose tales.
ABSTRACT A close look at the history of an apparently secular popular culture phenomenon like Bigfoot reveals a deeply religious attempt to negotiate the boundaries of the human. Medieval images of the Wild Man have long been recognized by scholars as depictions of the human in a state of wildness, beyond the reach of civilization or the grace of God. This article locates this image in an entirely different place and period, traced from medieval Europe to the early United States. Focusing on newspapers, periodicals, and religious sources, the article analyzes the appearance of “wild people”—hair-covered, monstrous humanlike figures—in the United States before the twentieth century. This analysis shows how the meanings attached to wild people diversified along social, religious, and scientific lines during this period. These sources show that the meaning of the American wild person underwent a significant transformation during this period, from a preternatural “wonder,” an essentially medieval notion of ruptures in the order of nature, to a scientific anomaly: a missing link or a hidden primate.
ABSTRACT Trees are linked to early modern conceptions of witchcraft, most notably as designated sites of the witches’ Sabbath. Yet the additional roles that trees play in witchcraft imagery have received little scholarly attention. This article examines the multifaceted roles of trees in European and North American visual culture from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, arguing that trees function not merely as passive scenery but as vital components imbued with expressive, practical, and symbolic force. Drawing on a diverse array of media—including book illustrations, sheet music covers, prints, paintings, and photographs—this study explores three configurations: barren trunks as silent witnesses to violence and death, trees as platforms for musicians above the Sabbath’s revelers, and anthropomorphic trees as analogues or avatars of witches themselves. By analyzing the motif of the solitary tree, the article offers a new perspective on the enduring association between witches and forest settings in the cultural imagination.
