Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the RestorationThe 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. |
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... what appears to be a commonplace representation of man as microcosm. Sendivogius states that men are “created after the likeness of the great World, yea after the Image of God. Thou hast in Backgrounds, Definitions, and Preliminaries 21.
... Thou hast in thy Body the Anatomy of the whole World, thou hast instead of the Firmament the Quintessence of the four Elements, extracted out of the Chaos of Sperms into a Matrix, and into a Skin, which doth compasse it round ...
... Thou hast loved justice and hatest wickedness, therefore the Lord thy God hath anointed thee with oil"; that on the right states, “Await the Lord, play the man, and He will strengthen thy heart.” Alchemical authors are, then, centrally ...
... all that he has related: Bot thei that writen the scripture Of Grek, Arabe and of Caldee, Thei were of such Auctorite That theiferst founden out the weie Of al that thou hast herd me seie; Wherof the 58 Darke Hierogliphicks.
... thou hast herd me seie; Wherof the Cronique of her lore Schal stonde in pris for everemore. [4:2626-32) For Elias Ashmole, this section from book 4 of the Confessio Amantis provided sufficient evidence to place Gower “in the Register of ...
Contents
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 |
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Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the ... Stanton J. Linden No preview available - 1996 |