Magic

Magic is an elusive and disputed idea, and there are complex connections between fictional uses of magical tropes – in, for example, romances – and the “real” discourses and practices of medieval magic, which might take the form of praestigia (illusion), mathematica(divination), maleficia (evil magic), or one of many other variants. Literary texts' presentations of the figure of the magician have been influenced by biblical typology and the Galfridian tradition of historiography. Having once been a topic of principal interest to practitioners and ecclesiastical authorities, the occult tradition has taken its place as an important concern in mainstream literary and intellectual history, including medieval studies; a development stimulated by the rise of anthropology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.