Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature
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Beschreibung
This book explores the different functions and metaphorical concepts of alchemy in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English poetry and bridges them together with the exempla tradition in late medieval English literature. Such poetic narratives function as exemplary models which directly address the ambiguity of medieval English alchemical practice. This book examines the foundation of this relationship between alchemical narrative and exemplum in the poetry of Gower and Chaucer in the fourteenth century before exploring its diffusion in lesser-known anonymous poems and recipes in the fifteenth century, namely alchemical dialogues between Morienus and Merlin, Albertus Magnus and the Queen of Elves, and an alchemical version of John Lydgate’s poem The Churl and the Bird. It investigates how this exemplarity can be read as inherent to understanding poetic narratives containing alchemy, as well as enabling the reader to reassess the understanding and expectations of science and narrative within medieval English poetry.
Illustrates how poetry can be creatively used to comment and critique scientific experimentation and practice Examines poetry of Gower and Chaucer in the fourteenth-century Explores intersections of literature and science
Autor*in
Curtis Runstedler
Themen in »Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature«
Literature, Science and Medicine Studies alchemy poetry Middle English literature medieval science exempla
Stimmen zu »Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature«
"This exciting volume proposes a new intervention in medieval literary studies, seeking to demonstrate the far-reaching influence of alchemy and its ambitions on the constructions and motivations of Middle English narrative. The book is impressive in its synthesis of scholarship on alchemy ... . The book will therefore be a valuable resource for further investigations into pre-modern alchemical writing." (Hope Doherty-Harrison, Medium AEvum Journal, Vol. 94 (1), 2025)
“This book is an able, well-researched, engaging overview of alchemy, alchemical poetry, and exemplarity in medieval literature, primarily focusing, as its title would intimate, on English-language writings. … it’s an important contribution to the field and should serve up some new candidates for Middle English poetry syllabi.” (Eleanor Johnson, Speculum, Vol. 99 (4), October, 2024)
“Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry offers useful insights for scholars in a range of fields, most significantly for those interested in the complex literary valences of knowledge-making and transmission.” (Thomas Banbury, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, January 7, 2024)
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"Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature is a daring book. Focusing on the moral uses of alchemy as it appears in narratives of late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century poets in England, Curtis Runstedler argues vigorously that late medieval writers grasped the transformational power of alchemy and alchemical practices to effect positive changes in the character and behavior of the fictive practitioners they created, and through them of real-life readers as well. This book uncovers surprising new ways to understand the work of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, as well as several anonymous romances—a true turning of the familiar—but here-to-fore overlooked—into gold." (R. F. Yeager, Professor Emeritus, University of West Florida)
"Curtis Runstedler casts a fascinating light on attitudes to alchemy in the Middle Ages and its literary potential for moral instruction; he examines texts by well-known writers such as Chaucer and Gower, but alsolittle-known dialogues featuring unexpected speakers such as Merlin and the Queen of Elves. Runstedler succeeds in making this arcane subject accessible. His book will be useful not only to medievalists, but also as a prequel to the increasing interest in alchemy in Early Modern English literature." (Elizabeth Archibald, Professor Emerita, Durham University)
"Good scholarly books are often characterised by mixing different ingredients in new ways. This one pioneers the blending of three - the history of alchemy, medieval English poetry, and medieval exemplary literature - and the result is a set of valuable new insights." (Ronald Hutton, Professor, University of Bristol)
"John Gower’s interest in alchemy has often puzzled modern readers, not only because the subject itself seems strange, but also because the description of alchemy in Book IV of the Confessio Amantis is not in Gower’s usual form, andso seems not to function in the way his more narrative exempla do. But in the Gower chapter of this careful study of alchemy in Middle English texts, Curtis Runstedler convincingly shows that the alchemical 'digression' offers a new model for both exemplary literature and for virtuous labour. Gower’s description of alchemy, in addition to revealing the poet's deep familiarity with the contemporary alchemical tradition, shows how the practice itself can be exemplary, thanks to the intellectual and physical labour at its core. And while for Gower, the modern alchemist, having lost contact with the knowledge once embedded at the heart of this science, can never succeed, nevertheless the pursuit of alchemical knowledge offers a praiseworthy antidote to sloth, and a call for continuing attention to linguistic interpretation and communication - central issues for a prolific, trilingual, widely-read poet such as Gower. I will confess to having skipped quickly through this section in past encounters with the Confessio, but this astute reading has changed my mind. If he hasn’t managed to transmute my ignorance into knowledge, Runstedler has at least set me on the path to new learning, and I am very happy to find myself there." (Siân Echard, Professor, University of British Columbia)
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