Literature

Historical Texts:
-->Reginald Scot. The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584.
https://archive.org/details/discoverieofwitc00scot

Agrippa von Nettesheim. De Occulta Philosophia, 1533.
Agrippa von Nettesheim. De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientarum, 1533

--> Jean Prévost’s “La Première Partie des Subtiles et Plaisantes Inventions,” the earliest known important conjuring book, printed in Lyons in 1584
https://archive.org/details/8Y4098INV7462RES

--> Giambattista della Porta. "Magia Naturalis", 1588. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbc3&fileName=rbc0001_2009pre23451page.db&recNum=1

Hopkins, Albert A. "Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions Including Trick Photography." Project Gutenberg, 1897[2014]. URL+
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45235/45235-h/45235-h.htm


Secondary Sources:
Jay, Ricky. Deceptive Practice. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2011.
Jay, Ricky. Cards as Weapons. Warner Books, 1977. http://nyquil.org/uploads/CARDS_AS_WEAPONS.PDF
Otto, Beatrice K. Fools are everywhere: The court jester around the world. University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Schindler, George. Magic with everyday objects: over 150 tricks anyone can do at the dinner table. Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
Thorndike, Lynn. "A history of magic and experimental science. The sixteenth century." Vol 5 and 6, Columbia University Press, 1936.

Singer 1993:
"Over the past few years, Jay has given a number of lectures on the origins of the confidence game, which he hopes to expand into a book-length history of cheating and deception. For the Whitney Museum’s Artists and Writers series, he is writing a book to be illustrated by William Wegman and others. It is a history of trick magic books, which were first produced in the sixteenth century. “I’m really intrigued with the concept of the book as both a subject and an object of mystery,” he said"

Further readings:
Geoffrey Scarre, John Callow et al. "Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe", The Guardian June 8, 2001
Green, Adam. "A Pickpocket's Tale.
The spectacular thefts of Apollo Robbins." The New Yorker January 7, 2013. URL=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/07/a-pickpockets-tale
URL=http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/jun/08/artsandhumanities.highereducation
Singer, Mark. Secrets of the Magnus. The New Yorker April 5, 1993. URL=
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/04/05/secrets-of-the-magus

ANALYTICAL CATEGORIES

(Basic) Effects

Classification into :
(Jay 2011)

• Production
• Disappearance
• Transformation
• Transposition
• Defiance of Natural Phenomena
• Mental Phenomena

(Basic) Skills, Practices, Training

• Speed
• Multiple Actions (cognitive and behavioral)
• Distraction repertoire (creating red herrings): verbal and gestures
• confidence (handling materials, knowing the order of the procedure, knowing the sources of error/failure/ambiguity...)

Objects and Tools

• Ordinary Objects/Tools
• Prepared Objects/Tools
• the Body (performer and test subject): entire body and particular parts, emphasis on eyes, hands

Location and Intended Audience

• environmental factors (levels of distractions in surroundings)
• sobriety (pub/tavern?)
• age/gender/education of individual test subjects plus crowd (spectators)
• Is the geometry/outline of the room important (giving away trick to some spectators)?

(Tentative) Research/Organizational QUESTIONS

Organizational Categories:

• Perception:
• Action:
• the Body:
• Directionality and distance (audience/performer)
• Persuasion

Qs: Relation between Reality and Faking /Forging?
Qs: Dependency on audience? (the factor that cannot be controlled?)
Qs: Relation between expectations and failures?

(Con)Textual Analysis

Intertextual :

• comparison with contemporary resources/texts/recipe books, how do they vary?
• which tricks are still in use? How much have they varied over time?

Intra-textual:

• relation between heading/title and recipe
• 
  

Misfits

(i.e., things that do not seem to fit or do not make sense?)