Verse and Transmutation: A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry (Critical Editions and Studies)
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.
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Verse and Transmutation: A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry (Critical Editions and Studies)
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.
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Verse and Transmutation: A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry (Critical Editions and Studies)

Verse and Transmutation: A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry (Critical Editions and Studies)

by Anke Timmermann
Verse and Transmutation: A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry (Critical Editions and Studies)

Verse and Transmutation: A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry (Critical Editions and Studies)

by Anke Timmermann

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9789004254848
Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Publication date: 09/25/2013
Series: History of Science and Medicine Library / Medieval and Early Modern Science , #21
Pages: 390
Product dimensions: 6.30(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Anke Timmermann, Ph.D. (Cantab. 2007), is a historian of science and Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge University Library (2013-14). Her publications include various articles on medieval and early modern alchemy and medicine, scientific poetry and historical manuscripts.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements xi

List of Tables, Diagrams and Figures xiii

Abbreviations xv

Naming Conventions xvi

Introduction 1

1 Defining a Corpus: The Scope of Historical Materials Considered 2

2 Writing History Through the Lives of Texts: An Alternative Approach 5

3 Reading this Book: A Brief Guide 9

Critical Studies

1 Introduction to a Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry 15

1 Alchemical Poetry in Late Medieval England 15

2 The Corpus Around the "Verses upon the Elixir" 23

2.1 The "Verses upon the Elixir" 25

2.2 Texts Associated with the "Verses upon the Elixir" 31

2.2.1 Physical Relations: "Boast of Mercury", "Mystery of Alchemists" and "Liber Patris Sapientiae" 31

2.2.2 Close Bonds: "Exposition" and "Wind and Water" 36

2.2.3 Intertextual Connections: "Richard Carpenter's Work" 40

2.2.4 Peripheral Corporality: "Short Work" and "Trinity" 50

2.2.5 Additional Poems from the Ripley Scrolls: "On the ground", "In the sea", "I shall you tell" 55

2.2.6 Added Ingredients: "Lead", "Thomas Hend" and "Terra Terrae Philosophicae" 58

2 The Corpus around the "Verses upon the Elixir": Origins, Patterns and Peculiarities 63

1 The Corpus Around the "Verses upon the Elixir" in Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts 64

2 Textual Variation and Corpus Connections 70

2.1 Structural Adaptation 71

2.2 Text Variation in Poetry 76

2.3 Interphraseology 82

3 Interpreting Scribal Variations 85

4 Coda: Copyists and Collectors in the Corpus Around the "Verses upon the Elixir" 88

3 Authorship, Authority and Alchemical Verse 93

1 Medieval Authorship and Alchemica 93

2 Attributing the "Verses upon the Elixir" 96

3 Translations: Language, Genre and Authority 101

3.1 "Richard Carpenter's Work": "Alumen de Hispania" in English Verse 102

3.2 "Terra Terrae Philosophicae": The "Verses upon the Elixir" in Neo-Latin Prose 107

4 The Ripley Scrolls: Alchemical Poetry, Images and Authority 113

1 Poems and Pretty Pictures: Introduction to the Ripley Scrolls 114

2 Illuminated Scrolls vs. Plain Codices: The Copyist's Dilemma 126

3 Named Authorities, the Ripley Scrolls and the Corpus Around the "Verses upon the Elixir" 137

5 Alchemical Poetry and Academia: Manuscripts as Chronicles of Scholarly Enquiry 143

1 Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.56 and the Libraries of Sixteenth-Century Cambridge 144

2 The Margins of Knowledge: Books and Commonplacing in Tudor England 155

3 Alchemy Annotated 159

3.1 Conversations in the Margins: Marginalia in Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.56 162

3.2 Reading Annotations as Historical Records 168

6 Alchemical Verse and the Organisation of Knowledge 173

1 The Sloane Notebooks: Medicine and the Corpus Around the 'Verses upon the Elixir" 174

1.1 Introduction to the Notebook Series 174

1.2 The Compiler 178

2 Notebooks as Virtual Libraries 179

2.1 Medica 180

2.2 Alchemica 184

2.3 Contemporary Libraries as a Source of Notebook Knowledge 185

2.4 Libraries and Laboratory Knowledge 187

3 The Organisation of Thought in the Notebook Series 190

3.1 The Order of Medicine 191

3.2 The Arrangement of Alchemical Information 193

Concluding Thoughts 203

Editions

Preface to the Editions 209

1 Abbreviations Used in the Critical Apparatus 212

2 Notes on the Stemmata 212

Poems 215

1 'Verses upon the Elixir" 215

2 "Boast of Mercury" 233

3 *"Mystery of Alchemists" (excerpts)1 243

4 "Liber Patris Sapientiae" (excerpts) 248

5 "Exposition" 254

6 "Wind and Water" 260

7 "Richard Carpenter's Work" 266

7.1 "Spain" 267

7.2 "Titan Magnesia" 268

7.3 "God Angel" 277

7.4 "Sun" 278

7.5 "Father Phoebus" 282

8 "Short Work" 286

9 Texts from the Ripley Scrolls 294

*"On the ground" 295

*"In the sea" 297

*"I shall you tell" 298

10 "Trinity" 300

Prose Texts 305

1 * "Alumen de Hispania" 305

2 "Lead" 312

3 "Thomas Hend" 316

4 * "Terra Terrae Philosophicae" 320

Bibliography 327

1 List of Manuscripts 327

2 Handlist of Manuscript Witnesses 329

3 Secondary Literature 350

Index 371

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