Witchhunt Narrative and the Intellectual Climate of America

本研究的重点是美国的宗教和政治不容忍如何导致猎巫现象，在这种现象中，少数人被指责为降临到一个社区的一系列不幸和灾难。惩罚邪恶的仪式起源于中世纪的欧洲，但在新大陆发生了变化，清教主义和恶劣的自然环境塑造了欧洲大陆早期定居者的思想氛围。殖民时期马萨诸塞州塞勒姆著名的巫术审判就是典型的美国版巫术审判。纵观美国历史，对邪恶“女巫”的追捕周期性地重新出现。其中一个重要的重新出现是20世纪的红色清洗，它在20世纪50年代的麦卡锡主义中达到顶峰。这次大清洗表明，排斥言论是多么强烈地吸引了大众的想象力，将某些人视为对国家构成社会和政治威胁的女巫。本研究的目的是探讨潜在的共同的智力假设和困境，标志着塞勒姆巫术审判和红色清洗在20世纪50年代，特别强调的叙事结构，其中女巫狩猎被描述。有理由，也有批评。通过查阅政治和宗教文献、小说，以及对20世纪50年代塞勒姆巫术审判和红色清洗的批评，我们试图捕捉美国精神的核心悖论，即在人道自由主义和对自身正义形象的狭隘追求之间摇摆。

This study focuses on the way religious and political intolerance in the United States led to the phenomenon of the witch hunt, in which a small number of individuals are blamed for a series of misfortunes and disasters which befall a community. The ceremony of punishing evil originated in Europe in the Middle Age but was transformed in the New World where both Puritanism and the harsh natural environment molded the intellectual climate of the continent's early settlers. The famous witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in the Colonial Period represent a typical example of the peculiarly American version of the phenomenon. Throughout American history the hunt for evil "witches" reemerged periodically. One important such reemergence was the red purge in the twentieth century that culminated in McCarthyism in the 1950s. This purge showed how strongly the rhetoric of exclusion appealed to the popular imagination in its identification of certain people as witches who represented a social and political threat to the nation. The aim of this study is to explore the underlying common intellectual assumptions and dilemmas that marked both the Salem witchcraft trials and the red purge in the 1950s, with special emphasis on the narrative structure in which the witch hunt was depicted. Justified, and criticized. By looking at political and religious documents, novels, and criticisms about the Salem witchcraft trials and the red purge in the 1950s, we attempt to capture the central paradox of American psyche, torn between humane liberalism and intolerant pursuit of its own image of justice.