The Witch’s Body as a Narrative and Symbolic Tool

Abstract

"This paper aims to propose an exploration of the corporeality of witches insofar as it has been used as a medium or nexus for narratives, or as a symbolic sign in various artistic forms and arrangements. The starting point is the highlighting of an antithesis, which is permanently nuanced and overcome in the long evolution of culture, namely between the beauty of young witches and the ugliness of old ones. A first section of the article focuses on painting, looking at works by Baldung Grien, Salvator Rosa, Frans Francken, Luis Ricardo Falero. A second section looks at the corporeal duality that characterizes witchcraft and its resolution in synthesis in Vasile Voiculescu’s short story Magical Love. The last section is devoted to cinematographic works and how they have incorporated in their complex visual and textual narratives an ancient representational and iconographic tradition with roots in Renaissance and Baroque painting and in the literature of Greco-Latin Antiquity. Keywords: witches, body, narration, symbolic, visual arts, literature, cinema. "