The 15th-century classic of paranoid witch-hunting, Kramer and Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum, provides a convenient gloss on the word 'glamour'. Witches, the Dominican inquisitors tell us, can rob a man of his penis or at least make him think that he has been robbed. The victim wakes up in the morning, looks down and sees nothing there - or rather he sees, where his penis should be, what is called a 'glamour'.

LRB 29 September 1988 | PDF Download