1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910138996603321

Autore

Timmermann Anke

Titolo

Verse and transmutation : a corpus of Middle English alchemical poetry (critical editions and studies) / / by Anke Timmermann

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Brill, 2013

Leiden, Netherlands : , : Brill, , 2013

©2013

ISBN

90-04-25483-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (390 p.)

Collana

History of Science and Medicine Library, , 1872-0684 ; ; Volume 42

Medieval and Early Modern Science ; ; Volume 21

Disciplina

540.1/12

Soggetti

Alchemy

Manuscripts, English (Middle)

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front Matter -- Introduction -- Introduction to a Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry -- The Corpus around the “Verses upon the Elixir”: Origins, Patterns and Peculiarities -- Authorship, Authority and Alchemical Verse -- The Ripley Scrolls: Alchemical Poetry, Images and Authority -- Alchemical Poetry and Academia: Manuscripts as Chronicles of Scholarly Enquiry -- Alchemical Verse and the Organisation of Knowledge -- Concluding Thoughts -- Preface to the Editions -- Poems -- Prose Texts -- Bibliography -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

Verse and Transmutation: A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry identifies and investigates a corpus of twenty-one anonymous recipes for the philosophers’ stone dating from the fifteenth century. These were circulated and received in association with each other until the mid-seventeenth century, when a number of them appeared in Elias Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum . These editions are the first to make this previously unidentified corpus available to researchers. The accompanying studies discover the complex histories of these alchemica , in plain and illuminated manuscripts, as anonyma and in attribution to famous authors, and in private and institutional, medical and academic book collections. Together, they offer novel



insights into the role of alchemy and poetry in late medieval and early modern England.