Description
Verbal Medicines examines the fascinating intersection of language, spirituality, and healing in early English charm traditions. Leslie K. Arnovick provides a detailed linguistic analysis of how prayer and invocation functioned as therapeutic tools in medieval and early modern England, exploring the belief that words possessed inherent curative and protective powers.
The book investigates the structure, rhetoric, and semantic content of English charms, demonstrating how practitioners crafted linguistic formulas intended to heal ailments, ward off evil, and invoke divine intervention. Through careful textual analysis, Arnovick reveals how charm-makers understood language as a performative force capable of effecting real-world transformations.
Part of the Studies in English Language series, this work contributes significantly to our understanding of historical English, religious practices, and the cultural beliefs surrounding verbal magic and healing. It will appeal to scholars of historical linguistics, medieval studies, religious history, and those interested in the cultural history of medicine and folk practices.
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