Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the RestorationUniversity Press of Kentucky, 11.07.2014 г. - 384 страници The literary influence of alchemy and hermeticism in the work of most medieval and early modern authors has been overlooked. Stanton Linden now provides the first comprehensive examination of this influence on English literature from the late Middle Ages through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Drawing extensively on alchemical allusions as well as on the practical and theoretical background of the art and its pictorial tradition, Linden demonstrates the pervasiveness of interest in alchemy during this three-hundred-year period. Most writers—including Langland, Gower, Barclay, Eramus, Sidney, Greene, Lyly, and Shakespeare—were familiar with alchemy, and references to it appear in a wide range of genres. Yet the purposes it served in literature from Chaucer through Jonson were narrowly satirical. In literature of the seventeenth century, especially in the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Milton, the functions of alchemy changed. Focusing on Bacon, Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Milton—in addition to Jonson and Butler—Linden demonstrates the emergence of new attitudes and innovative themes, motifs, images, and ideas. The use of alchemy to suggest spiritual growth and change, purification, regeneration, and millenarian ideas reflected important new emphases in alchemical, medical, and occultist writing. This new tradition did not continue, however, and Butler's return to satire was contextualized in the antagonism of the Royal Society and religious Latitudinarians to philosophical enthusiasm and the occult. Butler, like Shadwell and Swift, expanded the range of satirical victims to include experimental scientists as well as occult charlatans. The literary uses of alchemy thus reveal the changing intellectual milieus of three centuries. |
Между кориците на книгата
Резултати 1 - 5 от 55.
... themes, images, attitudes, and representational modes that later writers incorporate in their works occur for the first time in Chaucer. For this reason he holds a special position as founder of a satirical tradition kept alive in the ...
... themes, and images does he most often borrow? What are some of the things that alchemy “does” in a literary context? How does alchemy, a highly visual art, impart this quality to a literary medium? Do the distinctive visual forms and ...
... theme of the day of judgment, when Christ our Lord shall come to judgment, in the last period of time, the foure Elements ... themes and motifs traditionally associated with this event: the period of persecution and wickedness that will ...
... theme of forbidden knowledge and the parallel between the practice of alchemy and the demonic that are developed in the Tale proper. Equally important in deepening the satire is Chaucer's introduction of two additional themes: that of ...
... theme, and moral message grow unobtrusively and naturally out of “story.” For these reasons the Canon's Yeomans Tale occupies a primary place at the beginning of the tradition of literary alchemy. To the extent that it possesses all of ...
Съдържание
1 | |
6 | |
37 | |
62 | |
Francis Bacon and Alchemy | 104 |
Ben Jonson and the Drama of Alchemy | 118 |
The Poetry of Donne and Herbert | 154 |
Alchemy Allegory and Eschatology in the Seventeenth Century | 193 |
Alchemy in the Poetry of Vaughan and Milton | 224 |
Alchemy Poetry and the Restoration Revolt against Enthusiasm | 260 |
10 Cauda Pavonis | 294 |
Notes | 298 |
Bibliography | 344 |
Index | 361 |
Други издания - Преглед на всички
Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the ... Stanton J. Linden Ограничен достъп - 2021 |