The Witch's image: From historical antiquity to contemporary film representations

Abstract

This article aims at discussing the historical-social development of the witch's image according to cultural, social and religious perspectives since the earlier stages of our Western civilization until the contemporary era. This historic overview will be discussed according to mythological inluences referring to the construction of the female image as transgressor which originated the acclaimed Middle Age “witch hunt”. In order to do so, we will use works by Civita, (1997), Blécourt (2017), Clark (2006) Maxwell-Stuart (2017), Page (2017), Sharpe (2017) and Wallis (2017) apart from contemporary ilm versions from he Wizard of Oz (1939) through The Witch (2015), which depict the witch's image transformation, so we can analyze, through its iconography, how such image was and is determined by the demands of several historical eras.