Alchemy and Verse in Late-Medieval England.
- Author/Editor
- Bentick, Eoin.
- Title
- Alchemy and Verse in Late-Medieval England.
- Published
- Bentick, Eoin. "Alchemy and Verse in Late-Medieval England." Ph.D. Dissertation. University College London, 2019. Dissertation Abstracts International C81.04 (2019). Accessible at https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10065606/ (full text restricted); abstract accessed, February 22, 2022.
- Review
- From Bentick's abstract: "This thesis displays the relationships between literary representations of alchemy and the literature produced by alchemists . . . . [focusing] on the allure of alchemy's obscure language. . . . [It begins with] an exploration of how the obscure language of alchemy was perceived by two non-alchemical poets: John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer. Chapter one . . . looks at the positive portrayal of alchemy in Gower's major works and chapter two looks at the negative portrayal of alchemy in Chaucer's 'The Canon's Yeoman's Tale'. . . . Chapter three delineates the heterogeneous alchemical verse found in a fifteenth-century manuscript: London, British Library, MS Harley 2407. This chapter defines and critiques four main categories of alchemical verse: gnomic poems, recipe-poems, theoretical poems, and conceit-poems. Chapter four examines the major works of two alchemical poets: George Ripley and Thomas Norton . . . . [and] the final . . . chapter presents instances from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century in which alchemical readers have suggested that non-alchemical texts harbour latent alchemical significations."
- Date
- 2019
- Gower Subjects
- Backgrounds and General Criticism
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations