Download or read book Darke Hierogliphicks written by Stanton J. Linden and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book ReJoycing written by Rosa Bollettieri Bosinelli and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this volume, the contributors -- a veritable Who's Who of Joyce specialists -- provide an excellent introduction to the central issues of contemporary Joyce criticism."
Download or read book American Hieroglyphics written by John T. Irwin and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2016-10-02 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the discovery of the Rosetta Stone led to new ways of thinking about language: “A brilliant new interpretation of major 19th-century American writers.” —J. Hillis Miller The discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the subsequent decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics captured the imaginations of nineteenth-century American writers and provided a focal point for their speculations on the relationships between sign, symbol, language, and meaning. Through fresh readings of classic works by Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, John T. Irwin’s American Hieroglyphics examines the symbolic mode associated with the pictographs. Irwin demonstrates how American Symbolist literature of the period was motivated by what he calls “hieroglyphic doubling,” the use of pictographic expression as a medium of both expression and interpretation. Along the way, he touches upon a wide range of topics that fascinated people of the day, including the journey to the source of the Nile and ideas about the origin of language.
Download or read book More Doctor Who and Philosophy written by Courtland Lewis and published by Open Court. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More Doctor Who and Philosophy is a completely new collection of chapters, additional to Doctor Who and Philosophy (2010) by the same editors. Since that first Doctor Who and Philosophy, much has happened in the Whoniverse: a new and controversial regeneration of the Doctor, multiple new companions, a few creepy new enemies of both the Doctor and planet Earth. And the show’s fiftieth anniversary! We’ve learned some astounding new things from the ever-developing story: that the Doctor’s number one rule is to lie, that he claims to have forgotten his role in the mass extermination of the Time Lords and the Daleks, that the Daleks do have a concept of divine beauty (divine hatred, of course), and that Daleks may become insane (didn’t we assume they already were?) Oh, and the cult of the Doctor keeps growing worldwide, with more cultish fans in the US, more and bigger Who conventions, more viewers of all ages, and more serious treatment by scholars from many disciplines. New questions have been raised and new questioners have come along, so there are plenty of new topics for philosophical scrutiny. Is the “impossible” girl really impossible? Is there anything wrong with an inter-species lesbian relationship (the kids weren’t quite ready for that in 1963, but no one blinks an eye in 2015)? Can it really be right for the Doctor to lie and to selectively forget? We even have two authors who have figured out how to build a TARDIS—instructions included! (Wait, there’s a catch, no . . . ?) And then there’s that old question that just won’t go away: why does the Doctor always regenerate as a male, and is that ever going to change? An added feature of this awesome new volume is that the editors have reached out to insiders of Who fandom, people who run hugely successful Who conventions, play in Who-inspired bands, and run wildly popular podcasts and websites, to share their privileged insights into why the Doctor is so philosophically deep. No more spoilers. It’s time for the truly thoughtful travelers in both time and space to rev up the TARDIS once more. . . . Allons-y, Alonzo!
Download or read book William Lethaby Symbolism and the Occult written by Amandeep Kaur Mann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-23 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book delves into the life and work of architect William Richard Lethaby (1857–1931) and his relationship with the occult and alchemy, in particular. Using detailed analysis of Lethaby’s drawings and architecture, the research uncovers Lethaby’s familiarity with occult concepts and ideology during the spiritual revolution of the nineteenth century. Throughout this time, countless individuals, particularly members of the avant-garde, rejected more traditional religious pathways and sought answers through experimental and mystical alternatives. William Lethaby, Symbolism and the Occult reveals how the architect was profoundly influenced by the Zeitgeist, which was saturated with references to spiritualism, mysticism and the occult, and explores the impact of occultism on his contemporaries and the wider Arts and Crafts Movement. This book is written for upper-level students, researchers and academics interested in architectural history, William Lethaby and nineteenth century culture and society.
Download or read book Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800 written by Jelena Krostovic and published by Literature Criticism from 1400. This book was released on 1998-09 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Comprehensive critical coverage of the works of the greatest writers and thinkers of the late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Restoration eras. A cumulative title index is published separately (included in subscription).
Download or read book Species Phantasms and Images written by Carolyn P. Collette and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interpretation of The Canterbury Tales within the context of medieval thinking about the nature and function of the senses
Download or read book John Gower Trilingual Poet written by Elisabeth M. Dutton and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2010 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays demonstrate John Gower's mastery of the three languages of medieval England - Latin, French and English. They examine the cultural re-definitions which his translations of literary traditions and languages achieved.
Download or read book The Alchemy Reader written by Stanton J. Linden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-28 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Alchemy Reader is a collection of primary source readings on alchemy and hermeticism, which offers readers an informed introduction and background to a complex field through the works of important ancient, medieval and early modern alchemical authors. Including selections from the legendary Hermes Trimegistus to Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, the book illustrates basic definitions, conceptions, and varied interests and emphases; and it also illustrates the highly interdisciplinary character of alchemical thought and its links with science and medicine, philosophical and religious currents, the visual arts and iconography and, especially, literary discourse. Like the notable anthologies of alchemical writings published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it seeks to counter the problem of an acute lack of reliable primary texts and to provide a convenient and accessible point of entry to the field.
Download or read book The Cambridge Introduction to Chaucer written by Alastair Minnis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geoffrey Chaucer is the best-known and most widely read of all medieval British writers, famous for his scurrilous humour and biting satire against the vices and absurdities of his age. Yet he was also a poet of passionate love, sensitive to issues of gender and sexual difference, fascinated by the ideological differences between the pagan past and the Christian present, and a man of science, knowledgeable in astronomy, astrology and alchemy. This concise book is an ideal starting point for study of all his major poems, particularly The Canterbury Tales, to which two chapters are devoted. It offers close readings of individual texts, presenting various possibilities for interpretation, and includes discussion of Chaucer's life, career, historical context and literary influences. An account of the various ways in which he has been understood over the centuries leads into an up-to-date, annotated guide to further reading.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Medical Language A Dictionary written by Sujata Iyengar and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Physicians, readers and scholars have long been fascinated by Shakespeare's medical language and the presence of healers, wise women and surgeons in his work. This dictionary includes entries about ailments, medical concepts, cures and, taking into account recent critical work on the early modern body, bodily functions, parts, and pathologies in Shakespeare. Shakespeare's Medical Language will provide a comprehensive guide for those needing to understand specific references in the plays, in particular, archaic diagnoses or therapies ('choleric', 'tub-fast') and words that have changed their meanings ('phlegmatic', 'urinal'); those who want to learn more about early modern medical concepts ('elements', 'humors'); and those who might have questions about the embodied experience of living in Shakespeare's England. Entries reveal what terms and concepts might mean in the context of Shakespeare's plays, and the significance that a particular disease, body part or function has in individual plays and the Shakespearean corpus at large.
Download or read book Advances in Quantum Systems in Chemistry Physics and Biology written by Liliana Mammino and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-05 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited, multi-author book gathers selected, peer-reviewed contributions based on papers presented at the 23rd International Workshop on Quantum Systems in Chemistry, Physics, and Biology (QSCP-XXIII), held in Mopani Camp, The Kruger National Park, South Africa, in September 2018. The content is primarily intended for scholars, researchers, and graduate students working at universities and scientific institutes who are interested in the structure, properties, dynamics, and spectroscopy of atoms, molecules, biological systems, and condensed matter.
Download or read book Alchemical Belief written by Bruce Janacek and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-08-21 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did it mean to believe in alchemy in early modern England? In this book, Bruce Janacek considers alchemical beliefs in the context of the writings of Thomas Tymme, Robert Fludd, Francis Bacon, Sir Kenelm Digby, and Elias Ashmole. Rather than examine alchemy from a scientific or medical perspective, Janacek presents it as integrated into the broader political, philosophical, and religious upheavals of the first half of the seventeenth century, arguing that the interest of these elite figures in alchemy was part of an understanding that supported their national—and in some cases royalist—loyalty and theological orthodoxy. Janacek investigates how and why individuals who supported or were actually placed at the traditional center of power in England’s church and state believed in the relevance of alchemy at a time when their society, their government, their careers, and, in some cases, their very lives were at stake.
Download or read book Gender and Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Culture written by Professor Kathleen Perry Long and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-28 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of new interest in alchemy as more significant than a bizarre aberration in rational Western European culture, this collection examines both alchemical and medical discourses in the larger context of early modern Europe. How do early scientific discourses infiltrate other cultural domains such as literature, philosophy, court life, and the conduct of households? How do these new contexts deflect scientific pursuits into new directions, and allow a larger participation in the elaboration of scientific methods and perspectives? Might there have been a scientific subculture, particularly surrounding alchemy, which allowed women to participate in scientific pursuits long before they were admitted in an investigative capacity into official academic settings? This volume poses those questions, as a starting point for a broader discussion of scientific subcultures and their relationship to the restructuring and questioning of gender roles.
Download or read book Fictions of Conversion written by Jeffrey S. Shoulson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fraught history of England's Long Reformation is a convoluted if familiar story: in the space of twenty-five years, England changed religious identity three times. In 1534 England broke from the papacy with the Act of Supremacy that made Henry VIII head of the church; nineteen years later the act was overturned by his daughter Mary, only to be reinstated at the ascension of her half-sister Elizabeth. Buffeted by political and confessional cross-currents, the English discovered that conversion was by no means a finite, discrete process. In Fictions of Conversion, Jeffrey S. Shoulson argues that the vagaries of religious conversion were more readily negotiated when they were projected onto an alien identity—one of which the potential for transformation offered both promise and peril but which could be kept distinct from the emerging identity of Englishness: the Jew. Early modern Englishmen and -women would have recognized an uncannily familiar religious chameleon in the figure of the Jewish converso, whose economic, social, and political circumstances required religious conversion, conformity, or counterfeiting. Shoulson explores this distinctly English interest in the Jews who had been exiled from their midst nearly three hundred years earlier, contending that while Jews held out the tantalizing possibility of redemption through conversion, the trajectory of falling in and out of divine favor could be seen to anticipate the more recent trajectory of England's uncertain path of reformation. In translations such as the King James Bible and Chapman's Homer, dramas by Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, and poetry by Donne, Vaughan, and Milton, conversion appears as a cypher for and catalyst of other transformations—translation, alchemy, and the suspect religious enthusiasm of the convert—that preoccupy early modern English cultures of change.
Download or read book Literature and the Encounter with God in Post Reformation England written by Michael Martin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each of the figures examined in this study”John Dee, John Donne, Sir Kenelm Digby, Henry and Thomas Vaughan, and Jane Lead”is concerned with the ways in which God can be approached or experienced. Michael Martin analyzes the ways in which the encounter with God is figured among these early modern writers who inhabit the shared cultural space of poets and preachers, mystics and scientists. The three main themes that inform this study are Cura animarum, the care of souls, and the diminished role of spiritual direction in post-Reformation religious life; the rise of scientific rationality; and the struggle against the disappearance of the Holy. Arising from the methods and commitments of phenomenology, the primary mode of inquiry of this study resides in contemplation, not in a religious sense, but in the realm of perception, attendance, and acceptance. Martin portrays figures such as Dee, Digby, and Thomas Vaughan not as the eccentrics they are often depicted to have been, but rather as participating in a religious mainstream that had been radically altered by the disappearance of any kind of mandatory or regular spiritual direction, a problem which was further complicated and exacerbated by the rise of science. Thus this study contributes to a reconfiguration of our notion of what ’religious orthodoxy’ really meant during the period, and calls into question our own assumptions about what is (or was) ’orthodox’ and ’heterodox.’
Download or read book A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century written by Peter J. Ramberg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-14 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century covers the period from 1815 to 1914 and the birth of modern chemistry. The elaboration of atomic theory - and new ideas of periodicity, structure, bonding, and equilibrium - emerged in tandem with new instruments and practices. The chemical industry expanded exponentially, fuelled by an increasing demand for steel, aluminium, dyestuffs, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods. And the chemical laboratory became established in its two distinct modern settings of the university and industry. At the turn of the century, the discovery of radioactivity took hold of the public imagination, drawing chemistry closer to physics, even as it threatened to undermine the whole concept of atomism. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Chemistry presents the first comprehensive history from the Bronze Age to today, covering all forms and aspects of chemistry and its ever-changing social context. The themes covered in each volume are theory and concepts; practice and experiment; laboratories and technology; culture and science; society and environment; trade and industry; learning and institutions; art and representation. Peter J. Ramberg is Professor of the History of Science at Truman State University, USA. Volume 5 in the Cultural History of Chemistry set. General Editors: Peter J. T. Morris, University College London, UK, and Alan Rocke, Case Western Reserve University, USA.
