03497nam 2200697Ia 450 991095785390332120251117082338.09780804772877080477287810.1515/9780804772877(CKB)2550000000007062(EBL)483443(OCoLC)589169126(SSID)ssj0000334512(PQKBManifestationID)11285667(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000334512(PQKBWorkID)10259750(PQKB)10396501(StDuBDS)EDZ0000127884(DE-B1597)564080(DE-B1597)9780804772877(Au-PeEL)EBL483443(CaPaEBR)ebr10364966(OCoLC)1178769840(Perlego)744819(MiAaPQ)EBC483443(iGPub)CSPLUS0005625(EXLCZ)99255000000000706220081208d2010 uy 0engur|||||||||||txtccrAlchemical mercury a theory of ambivalence /Karen Pinkus1st ed.Stanford, California Stanford University Pressc20101 online resource (230 p.)Description based upon print version of record.9780804760324 0804760322 Includes bibliographical references and index.Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Lead into Gold -- § 1 Visibilia -- Excursus: Ambivalence -- § 2 Chemical Nuptials -- Excursus: Mercury -- § 3 A Chemical Couple -- § 4 Rumpelstiltskin -- § 5 “The Sandman” -- Excursus: Counterfeiting -- § 6 Reading Capital I Alchemically -- § 7 Digital Gold -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index How can we account, in a rigorous way, for alchemy's ubiquity? We think of alchemy as the transformation of a base material (usually lead) into gold, but "alchemy" is a word in wide circulation in everyday life, often called upon to fulfill a metaphoric duty as the magical transformation of materials. Almost every culture and time has had some form of alchemy. This book looks at alchemy, not at any one particular instance along the historical timeline, not as a practice or theory, not as a mode of redemption, but as a theoretical problem, linked to real gold and real production in the world. What emerges as the least common denominator or "intensive property" of alchemy is ambivalence, the impossible and paradoxical coexistence of two incompatible elements. Alchemical Mercury moves from antiquity, through the golden age of alchemy in the Dutch seventeenth century, to conceptual art, to alternative fuels, stopping to think with writers such as Dante, Goethe, Hoffmann, the Grimm Brothers, George Eliot, and Marx. Eclectic and wide-ranging, this is the first study to consider alchemy in relation to literary and visual theory in a comprehensive way.Alchemy in literatureAlchemy in artAmbivalenceRhetoricAlchemy in literature.Alchemy in art.Ambivalence.Rhetoric.700/.47Pinkus Karen1825850MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910957853903321Alchemical mercury4551187UNINA