In Literature
Severed hands in an occult context occur as early as Herodotus's "Tale of Rhampsinitus" (ii, 121), in which a clever thief leaves a dead hand behind in order to avoid capture, or in early stories of lycanthropy, such as Henry Boguet's Discours exécrable de sorciers in 1590.
The second of the Ingoldsby Legends, "The Hand of Glory, or, The Nurse's Story", describes the making and use of a Hand of Glory.
Théophile Gautier wrote a poem on the hand of the poet thief Lacenaire, severed after his execution for a double murder, presumably for future use as a hand of glory.
In the Harry Potter series, the character Draco Malfoy uses the Hand of Glory in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to escape the Room of Requirement.
In the book The House with a Clock in Its Walls, the antagonist uses a hand of glory to execute her plan to destroy the world.
In Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand, a Hand of Glory is used by Dr. Magda Kurtz.
Read more about this topic: Hand Of Glory
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Poe gives the sense for the first time in America, that literature is serious, not a matter of courtesy but of truth.”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)