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Ph.D theses on alchemy

A provisional list of some Ph.D. theses on alchemy and hermeticism.
Microfilms of most of these can be ordered on Inter-Library loan through many educational institutions and libraries.
Back to reference library . Theses authors A-H . Theses authors P-Z.

55. Irwin, Lawrence Lovell.
'Vec Makropulos': history and immortality in Bohemia and Czechoslovakia, 1576-1938 (holy roman emperor Rudolf II, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, Karel Capek)
Order No: AAC 1376626 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: EASTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY (6456) Degree: MA Date: 1995 pp: 138
Source: MAI 34/02, p. 578, Apr 1996
Subject: HISTORY, EUROPEAN (0335); LITERATURE, SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN (0314); THEATER (0465)
Abstract: Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, during his rule in Prague, showed an intense interest in the centuries old practice of alchemy, particularly in the possibility of obtaining an 'elixir of life' from the secret process. Centuries later, the next head of state to rule in Prague, President Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, also showed an interest in the philosophical issues of life, death and immortality. Masaryk's friend, the playwright Karel Capek wrote a play in 1922 Vec Makropulos (later turned into an opera of the same name by Leos Janacek) about Rudolf's quest for the elixir. One can see the play as Capek's indirect tribute to Masaryk and as an allegory on the fate of the first Czechoslovak Republic which Masaryk ruled. This paper is the culmination of several years of research into the contemporary and medieval historical aspects of the play and includes research in literary, medical and political history.
56. Jepson, Lisa Renee.
Giulio Camillo and the rhetoric of memory (Camillo Giulio, Renaissance, mnemonics)
Order No: AAC 9117626 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: YALE UNIVERSITY (0265) Degree: PHD Date: 1990 pp: 215
Advisor: VALESIO, PAOLO
Source: DAI-A 52/01, p. 176, Jul 1991
Subject: LITERATURE, ROMANCE (0313); LITERATURE, GENERAL (0401)
Abstract: This dissertation addresses the problematics of the language of memory as exemplified by the work of the Renaissance mnemonic theorist Giulio Camillo. The central focus of this study is Camillo's L'Idea del Theatro, which is an epigrammatic explication of a series of Homeric images intended to cover the interior of a small theatre constructed solely as a container of divine secrets. The secrets, encoded by literary associations, emerge as a result of the tension between the Homeric images and the Hermetic epigrams. The tension itself functions as a mnemonic cue pointing metaphorically to more appropriate subtexts than those offered by the deceptive epigrams. The Homeric and Hermetic symbols actually conceal alchemical secrets.
Chapter One gives an exhaustive and original analysis of the alchemical ideational center of Camillo's memory theatre. This first chapter analyzes the images and structure of Camillo's memory theatre, the subtexts, and the tropes (mnemonic cues) that link the texts. Chapter Two addresses the implications of a hermeneutics of knowledge as opposed to a hermeneutics of knowing. It also defines a poetics of mnemonics based on the interpretation given in Chapter One. Chapter Three addresses the problematics of materiality in the memory theatre in relation to Renaissance theories of magic and the theory of hieroglyphic symbolism. Chapter four demonstrates that the pleasure garden of Armida in Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata is a metaphor of Camillo's memory theatre, and shows how literal retrospection, reflection in a mirror, may be a metaphor of memory.
57. Johnson, Obed Simon.
A study of Chinese alchemy.
Order No: NOT AVAILABLE FROM UMI ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY (0028) Degree: PHD Date: 1926
Source: ADD L1928
Subject: CHEMISTRY, GENERAL (0485)
58. Johnson, William Ideson.
Hermetic alchemy as the pattern for schooling seen by Ivan Illich in the works of John Amos Comenius.
Order No: AAC 7318908 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY (0168) Degree: PHD Date: 1973 pp: 168
Source: DAI-A 34/02, p. 548, Aug 1973
Subject: EDUCATION, ADULT AND CONTINUING (0516)
59. Joiner, Dorothy Marie.
Hieronymus Bosch and the esoteric tradition
Order No: AAC 8226366 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: EMORY UNIVERSITY (0665) Degree: PHD Date: 1982 pp: 229
Source: DAI-A 43/06, p. 2055, Dec 1982
Subject: HISTORY, MEDIEVAL (0581)
Abstract: Hieronymus Bosch should be placed in the syncretist tradition, that lineage which attempts to fuse elements of Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and Alchemy with Christianity. To support this thesis, the dissertation analyzes Bosch's The Temptation of Saint Anthony, summoning three kinds of evidence: historical, iconographical, and archetypal.
Historical evidence linking Bosch with occult thought is indeed tenuous. It centers on Bosch's possible acquaintance with the Jew Almaengien, who converted to Christianity and who was for a time allied to the Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap, the confraternity to which Bosch belonged. It is feasible to assume that Bosch and Almaengien met; but beyond that narrow assumption, speculation is riskier.
Bosch's imagery, on the other hand, supplies more convincing evidence. The artist employs what seem to be specific references to the metaphoric language of Kabbalah, Gnosticism, and Alchemy, those traditions converging in Syncretism. The triptych's multiple shell-like forms suggest both the kelippot of Kabbalah, as well as the "shell" symbol from Gnosticism. Bosch's female figures call to mind various aspects of the mystical Sophia, the feminine half of God exiled from her masculine counterpart and encased in a shell-like outer garment, symbolic of the world's evil. And the triptych's myriad sparks and pearls resemble images which appear in each of the mystical traditions and which always refer to "bits" of divinity "strewn" in matter.
Finally, analyzing the work archetypically serves to corroborate these iconographical findings. By throwing into relief the interconnections among the work's various elements, the archetypal reading allows us to understand them more clearly as parts of a whole. Bosch's symbols, the "shell," Sophia, and sparks and pearls, are integral to what Carl Jung terms "individuation," a process which, he says, is the same for the medieval alchemist as for the twentieth-century man in search of psychic wholeness.
60. Joly, Bernard.
Les formes de rationalite a l'oeuvre dans la pensee alchimique au XVIIeme siecle. Traduction commentee du manuscriptum ad Fredericum de Pierre-Jean Fabre.
Nature : Doctorat (Nouveau Doctorat ). Discipline : Philosophie. Date : 1988. University : Lille 3. Director : Dumont, J. Paul. Registration number : 88LIL30014.
English summary : Classical alchemistic thought in the seventeenth century elaborates a theory of metal generation in which Stoic physics constitutes an essential pattern. In manuscriptum ad fredericum, Pierre-Jean Fabre presents the main guidelines of the doctrine according to which alchemical experiments are purifying processes which reveal the primal material of metals, the metallic semen sent from heaven, which is composed of three principles : mercury, sulphur and salt. In its accomplished form, it is called philosophical stone and removes all blemish from metals which it turns into gold, as well as from other living beings, which it cures. The coherence of this theory, which set up the prevaling pattern to the approach of matter as composed bodies until the eighteenth century enables Fabre to interpret the most common alchemistic allegories. By displaying patterns of rationality in the alchemistic thought it becomes possible to apprehend alchemy philosophically, rejecting both reductionistic positivism which considers alchemy merely as a prechemistry and a questionable interpretation of alchemy as a form of esoterism neglecting the rational dimension.
61. Joly, Michelle Elise
Ecriture et reintegration de l'etre dans 'L'oeuvre au noir' de Marguerite Yourcenar. (French text)
Order No: AAC 8900253 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: RICE UNIVERSITY (0187) Degree: PHD Date: 1988 pp: 380
Advisor: LOGAN, MARIE-ROSE
Source: DAI-A 49/12, p. 3646, Jun 1989
Subject: LITERATURE, ROMANCE (0313)
Abstract: My goal in this dissertation has been to undertake a questioning of the writing process as it unfolds in contemporary fiction. The methodological steps taken rest on a phenomenological approach applied to Marguerite Yourcenar's novel, L'oeuvre au noir. Through a reading of L'oeuvre au noir I show that the realm of alchemy serves as a metaphor for the writing process. The principles of disintegration (solve) and reintegration (coagula) at play in the practice of alchemy point to the "unreality" of phenomenological life while disclosing a "center" which represents the transcendental world. Within the framework of a pseudo-historical narrative, the central character, Zenon, undertakes a journey which leads him through various stages of perception of his own subjectivity. My argument rests on the assumption that Zenon's personal trials may be viewed as the rendering of an attempt to transcend one's own finitude.
The dissertation is divided into three parts. In the first part the concepts of writing and time come sharply into focus. There I analyze the fundamental duality upon which Marguerite Yourcenar's narrative practice rests. The world of sixteenth-century Flanders which has been chosen as a setting of L'oeuvre au noir lends itself to an exploration of the opposition between political and religious chaos on the one hand and the positing of an immobile center (Ouroboros) on the other hand.
The question of the subject and of its role in the narrative process constitutes the focus of the second part of the dissertation. As a character who wishes "to be more than a man" Zenon attempts to engage in a process of individuation. His suicide leaves two questions open. Does Zenon accomplish what is called by the alchemists "the work in red"? In other words does he reach a sense of absolute or should his death be interpreted as self-destruction? Through a close reading of the last chapter, I attempt to demonstrate that Marguerite Yourcenar does not answer those questions and that Zenon's challenge is also that of the writer. I engage in a discussion of L'Oeuvre au Noir within the broader context of philosophical and critical issues that are representative of our modernity. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)
62. Kaplan, Janet A.
Remedios Varo (1913-1963): Spanish-born Mexican painter, woman among the surrealists.
Order No: AAC 8906498 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (0054) Degree: PHD Date: 1983 pp: 359
Source: DAI-A 50/01, p. 6, Jul 1989
Subject: FINE ARTS (0357)
Abstract: This dissertation represents the first comprehensive study and the first monograph in English on the work of the Spanish-born Mexican painter, Remedios Varo (1913-1963). Trained in Madrid, and part of the Surrealist circle in Paris, Varo fled the Nazi occupation and settled in Mexico in 1941. There she enjoyed a short but astonishingly successful career made more extraordinary by the fact that Varo was a woman, an expatriate, and an easel painter working in a country that reserved its accolades for the male Mexican muralists.
Combining a miniaturist's attention to detail with finesse in glazing and varnishing, Varo created a surreal universe peopled by animal/human hybrids in which the properties of the organic and the inorganic, the natural and the technological interchange and overlap. As a child she indulged in dreams of adventure and travel; as an adult she faced war and exile. Transmuting autobiography into fantasy, Varo filled her work with characters, usually self-portraits, embarked on fantastic journeys in invented vehicles. Spiritual and psychological as well as physical, these journeys reflect Varo's interest in alchemy, astrology, mysticism, magic, the occult, and science.
Based primarily on unpublished documents, this study first examines the work of Varo's early years in Spain and France, then her mature work done in Mexico. A chapter entitled "Invitation to the Voyage" focuses on spiritual pilgrimage as the central metaphor for thematic analysis of her work. This is followed by an extensive study of her sources and influences, ranging from illuminated manuscripts and medieval architecture to the work of Bosch, Goya, El Greco, di Chirico, and Ernst. It concludes with examination of Varo's stylistic development and analysis of her relationship to Surrealism.
Varo died in 1963 at the age of 50, leaving a small but innovative oeuvre. Although the immediate popularity of her work still sustains in Mexico, and even though she was eulogized by such important figures as Andre Breton and Octavio Paz, her work is virtually unknown in the United States and Europe. This study is designed to introduce Varo's work to the English-speaking audience and to analyze her unique contribution as a Spanish-born Mexican painter and as a woman among the Surrealists.
63. Kay, Helen Mary.
Lawrence Durrell's 'Avignon Quintet': a book of miracles
Order No: AAC 8801827 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY (0128) Degree: PHD Date: 1987 pp: 220
Source: DAI-A 48/12, p. 3116, Jun 1988
Subject: LITERATURE, ENGLISH (0593)
Abstract: Lawrence Durrell's interest in Gnosticism achieves its most complete formulation in The Avignon Quintet, where a Gnostic structure of thought informs the spiritual progress of the protagonists. Conversely, their Nazi antagonists, who seek to emulate Gnosticism, actually invert its principles, with the result that National Socialism embodies the worst traits of Judeo-Christianity. Gnosticism also supplies the foundation for alchemy, in which Jung has discovered a kinship with the individuation process. The attempt to transmute base metals into gold signifies man's desire to redeem the divine spirit from its imprisonment in matter. It is therefore, Jung argues, a symbolic statement of the psychological imperative to recover the content of the unconscious and, through its reconciliation with the conscious mind, create an integrated psyche. Aubrey Blanford, the narrator of the Quintet, illustrates this psychological and spiritual movement from fragmentation to self-realization. Sexual love, as the primary alchemical coniunctio and traditional Gnostic means to man's fulfillment of his own capacity for godhead, effects the transformation.
The protagonists eventually converge upon Avignon, to find the Templar treasure for which they have all been searching. The resolution of their political, theological and sexual differences culminates in the production of the quincunx, and hence the ultimate reconciliation of matter with spirit. Blanford is now able to realize his role as Logos, and so to "write" the Quintet. In Monsieur, he creates a "fictive" representation of the "real" events which comprise the remaining volumes. Thus the structure of the novels echoes their content; from the prima materia of the first come the four differentiated versions of the succeeding novels, which lead, when read together, to the apprehension of "reality prime." Just as the characters discover the quincunx which designates the location of the Templar treasure, so does the reader discover the quincunx which the novels form. As the sign for Mercury, who is also Hermes Trismegistus and the Egyptian Thoth, the quincunx clearly designates the hermetic elements of the spiritual illumination which Durrell advocates.
64. Kenny, Neil Francis.
Beroalde de Verville: transformations of philosophical writing in the late Renaissance.
Order No: AAC D-86556 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD (UNITED KINGDOM) (0405) Degree: PHD Date: 1987 pp: 357
Source: DAI-A 50/07, p. 2085, Jan 1990
Subject: PHILOSOPHY (0422); LITERATURE, ROMANCE (0313)
Abstract: Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF.
The career of the polymath Francois Beroalde de Verville (1556-1626) illustrates certain problems and changes in late Renaissance philosophy and poetics. The present study examines not only Le Moyen de parvenir, for which Beroalde is mainly known, but also his many other works, most of which have received little or no attention. They belong to many different genres, and the philosophical themes of which they treat (physics, alchemy, grammar, and so on) are extremely diverse. The transformation of this philosophical writing is described from five related perspectives.
Part I charts Beroalde's attempt to compose a Renaissance encyclopaedia: the sum of his texts is to be a significantly ordered sequence covering the essentials of philosophy. This ideal disintegrates as Beroalde comes to present learning unsystematically. The miscellany emerges as an alternative to more encyclopaedic genres. Beroalde's textual structures become increasingly fragmented and digressive (Part II). In Part III, the mimetic quality of his writing is discussed. Beroalde initially presents himself as imitating nature's order. However, he eventually conceives of his miscellanies as representing its meslange and diversite. His allegories are also progressively modified (Part IV). The earlier ones describe idealised revelations of encyclopaedic or occult learning inside palaces and cabinets. Later allegorical and metaphorical motifs focus less on revelation and more on the process of seeking knowledge. The same shift emerges in Beroalde's theoretical statements about knowledge (Part V), which show the quest for science becoming an end in itself instead of a passport to sagesse. Along with epistemological problems (centering on authority) comes a greater stress on the limits of human knowledge. The epistemological changes are also reflected in Beroalde's use of authorial personae and of dialogue.
In sum, Beroalde's career is one instance of the late Renaissance decline of a certain encyclopaedic project for understanding and describing the world.
65. Kerr, Janet Macgregor Lynn.
Precious scrolls in chinese popular religious culture.
Order No: AAC 9501508 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO (0330) Degree: PHD Date: 1994 pp: 363
Advisor: YU, ANTHONY C.
Source: DAI-A 55/08, p. 2397, Feb 1995
Subject: LITERATURE, ASIAN (0305); RELIGION, HISTORY OF (0320)
Abstract: This dissertation examines closely three texts of Chinese popular religion called baojuan, or precious scrolls. Each of these baojuan belonged to a different style and period, drew on different religious teachings, and were put to different uses by their respective audiences. The Gufo Tianzhen kaozhena Longhua baojing (The Precious Scripture on the Dragon Flower as verified by the Old Buddha of Heavenly Purity; short title: Longhua jing), published in 1654, was a Taoist inner alchemy text and sacred scripture for the 'Religion on Complete and Instantaneous Enlightenment' based in Hebei Province. The Guanshiyin Pusa benxing jing (Scripture on the Deeds of the Bodhisattva Regarder of the Cries of the World; short title: Xiangshan baojuan), a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century version of a text widely assumed to originate before 1500, educated its audience in traditional lay Buddhism. It was read and recited by lay devotees across China, but particularly in southern China. The Lihua baojuan (Precious scroll on Lihua), a handcopied text probably produced between 1870 and 1930, transmitted basic Confucian values, into which were integrated Buddhist and Taoist teachings. The Lihua baojuan was written as a drama and performed in public arenas in the Jiangnan area. I argue that, despite their differences, baojuan constituted a unified genre of religious literature. The central function of this genre was to draw stories, teachings, and ritual actions into a new public and legitimate discourse. Over the course of time, baojuan developed and refined a repertoire of religious actions and beliefs which became the foundation of their theology and which profoundly shaped the religious culture of Ming and Qing China. I have characterized this religious culture as portable, conservative, practical, and diffuse. Some prominent features of this religious culture were: a shared concept of the structure of the universe; a belief in the transcendent law of retribution; an emphasis on the text as the locus of ritual efficacy; and construction of a saving being which functioned as moral model rather than as divine agent.
66. Kreiger, William Carl.
Henry David Thoreau and the limitations of Nineteenth-century science (Massachussets).
Order No: AAC 8622001 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY (0251) Degree: PHD
Date: 1986 pp: 241
Source: DAI-A 47/06, p. 2206, Dec 1986
Subject: AMERICAN STUDIES (0323); HISTORY OF SCIENCE (0585); LITERATURE, AMERICAN (0591)
Abstract: This study examines the early works (1837-48) of Henry David Thoreau in order to determine the extent to which Thoreau was limited by the scientific thinking of his day. While he was generally attracted to science because it emphasized comprehension of the facts and phenomena of nature, he disliked the Baconian science popular in his lifetime because it followed this emphasis to the near-exclusion of any insight or "philosophy." The usual contention among Thoreau scholars is that Thoreau gradually but reluctantly left his poetic sentiments behind in favor of the rigors of science. However, this study maintains that he did not begin from an unscientific position nor was he opposed to science. Instead, he followed an old-fashioned scientific course set at least as early as his student years at Harvard and reinforced by his later eclectic reading. Along the resulting archaic lines he derived an approach through which he attempted to portray his paradoxical vision of nature: it is always changing yet it is completely unified. To describe this quality, he thought, would require a different sort of language and framework from that of the currently popular taxonomy and classification systems.
Thus, in his early Journals he worked the language and imagery of alchemy and elemental philosophy toward full expression of his scientific view in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers where the physical characteristics and elemental principle of water, as understood by alchemists and elemental philosophers, served him well to portray nature as he saw it--changing yet constant. Finally in recognition of the sublimity of this paradox, he concluded A Week in emblematic silence but, as this study argues, also having reached a point in his thinking which amounted to a comprehensive view of nature.
67. Krell, Jonathan Francis.
'l'Esprit de l'Escalier': la symbolique des quatre elements dans l'oeuvre de Michel Tournier. (French text) (escalier)
Order No: AAC 9112001 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
Title:
Author: X
School: UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA (0246) Degree: PHD Date: 1990 pp: 377
Source: DAI-A 51/11, p. 3767, May 1991
Subject: LITERATURE, ROMANCE (0313)
Abstract: In a short text entitled "L'esprit de l'escalier", Michel Tournier elucidates his recurrent use of vertical imagery. He describes two antithetical stairways--one leading down to the cold obscurity of the basement, the other up to the more reassuring world of the attic--in a modest metaphor of the grandiose literary theme of descent and ascension, initiatory death and rebirth.
In Tournier's novels, the protagonists embark on a metaphorical voyage along a vertical axis: a long descent, marked by suffering and moral deterioration, comprises the greater part of the narrative, but in the final pages, this downward movement is abruptly reversed, and the novel ends in the ascensional apotheosis of the hero. I have used the term "elementary" to characterize this voyage through the universe of Tournier's imagination, which is dominated by the four primordial elements--earth, water, air and fire. Positive images associated with the earth (such as trees or gardens) give way to the disturbing realm of the underground (the world of caves, mud and excrement) as the hero descends. Water and fire are ambivalent elements, sometimes salutary (islands, the sun), but often harmful (mirrors, flames of destruction). Finally, images of air (arrows, clouds, wind) accompany the final apotheosis, the accomplishment of which depends on the character's initial suffering. This interdependence of evil and good, suffering and salvation can be likened to alchemical "sublimation": the clear, pure substance sought in the processes of volatilization and distillation is more easily obtained if heavy and often foul impurities are first added to the solution.
Tournier's fiction is "elementary" in other ways. The elemental forces of nature--in particular meteorological forces--play a key role in Les Meteores and other texts. Building on a foundation of some of Western culture's rudimentary myths, such as Robinson Crusoe, the ogre, twinship, and the biblical stories of creation and the three magi, Tournier performs a radical and disturbing transformation. His assortment of marginal characters voice a biting, subversive criticism that inverts and attacks the roots of modern Western society.
68. Latto, Jeff.
The idea of transmutation in the theatre of Giulio Camillo (Italy).
Order No: AAC MM74631 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: MCGILL UNIVERSITY (CANADA) (0781) Degree: MARCH Date: 1991 pp: 100
Source: MAI 31/03, p. 954, Fall 1993
Subject: ARCHITECTURE (0729); THEATER (0465); PHILOSOPHY (0422)
ISBN: 0-315-74631-9
Abstract: Transmutation is explored with respect to the sixteenth century text L'Idea del Theatro, by Giulio Camillo, linking the arts of alchemy, eloquence and divination. Alchemy establishes the doctrine of transmutation; eloquence is founded on the creative movement of deviation, while divination points to symbolization. The 'corporeal visions' of Camillo are set in opposition to the 'single eye' vision from which originate theories on perspective by the architects Leon Bastista Alberti and Sebastiano Serlio.
69. Laurent, Jean-Pierre
L'Esoterisme en France de 1948 � 1914
Nature : Doctorat d'etat. Discipline : Sociologie. Date : 1990 University : Paris 12. Director : Poulat, Emile. Registration number : 89PA120055.
English summary: Esoterism and occultism appeared in the French language around 1840 with Pierre Leroux, the first socialists and masonic authors both, to fill up the ditch increasing between science and religion. After the check of a new Christian science, new systems only seemed able to manage the religious estate like a parallel speech.
70. Linden, Stanton Jay.
Alchemy and the English literary imagination: 1385 to 1633.
Order No: AAC 7214442 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA (0130) Degree: PHD Date: 1971 pp: 338
Source: DAI-A 33/07, p. 3591, Jan 1973
Subject: LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, GENERAL (0586)
71. Long, Nila Crozier.
Balzac and alchemy (France).
Order No: AAC 8319780 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK (0046) Degree: PHD
Date: 1983 pp: 277
Source: DAI-A 44/05, p. 1469, Nov 1983
Subject: LITERATURE, ROMANCE (0313)
Abstract: The intent of this study is to use alchemy as a framework for the interpretation of five of Balzac's novels. The premise of such an analysis is twofold: namely, alchemy and Balzac have common ground in the beliefs that the material world reflects the spiritual/psychological realm and that the correspondence between the concrete, physical world and the intangible, mental domain can be demonstrated through the dynamics of transformation (i.e., individual development, evolution).
An alchemical approach has been used in the explication of Balzac's works; that is, the organization inherent to the operations and procedures in alchemy serves as a basis upon which to chart the protagonist's changing states (transformation) throughout the novel. The external world of actions, environment, physical appearance, etc., is shown, through reference to alchemical metaphor, to be an extension of the inner world of thoughts and feelings.
The first three chapters serve to explain alchemy from the point of view of its origins and philosophy, with special attention being given to the two important concepts, Prima Materia and Mercurius: the alchemical versions of the Principles of Matter and Spirit. In the next section, two chapters are included; the first points out some patterns common to literature and alchemy, and the second chapter explores the mutuality of beliefs which exists between the alchemist and Balzac. Following this material, the alchemical outlook is applied to the interpretation of La Peau de Chagrin, Ursule Mirouet, Louis Lambert, Seraph(')ita, and La Recherche de l'Absolu. The final section of the work views the theme of death (in each of the same novels) as an aspect of the alchemical symbolism of transcendence and rebirth.
72. Marshall, Jonathan P.
Alchemy in England: The Social Transformation of a Discourse.
MA (Hons), Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney 1992. pp 411.
Abstract: This thesis explores the relationship between the discourses of
alchemy and the changes in their social contexts.
It is argued that there are two modes of category use and formation; the
"clerical" and the "shamanic". The first of these involves manipulation
of symbols within a stable framework, the second attempts to manipulate
the framework itself. Alchemy is held to be (in this sense) primarily a
"shamanic" mode which can be either individually or socially directed
The history of alchemy in Britain is held to fall into four main periods.
In the first (c.1200-c.1540) the focus is on the production of wealth,
which the monarch attempts to control. In the second (c.1540-c.1620) the
focus is on medicine among the more marginal sections of the populace in
the cities- though there is also the development of a kind of
"industrial" alchemy. In the third (c.1610-c.1666) period the emphasis is
on the reformation of society and the cosmos through political and
religious revolution. In the fourth period (1660-90) alchemy is in
decline due to reaction against its earlier modes and its inability to
keep its "shamanic" form in a dominantly "clerical" environment. It is
argued that the particular political contexts of these periods changed
the various manifestations of alchemy.
In carrying out these aims the thesis gathers together information on the
history of alchemy whcih was previously scattered through a wide and
diverse collection of sources and hopes to provide a coherence which was
hithertoo lacking.
73. Martin, Carol Ann Nearpass.
Mercurial haeresis: Chaucer's hermeneutical po-et(h)ics.
Order No: AAC 9313739 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME (0165) Degree: PHD Date: 1993 pp: 484
Advisor: FRESE, DOLORES WARWICK; KRIER, THERESA M.
Source: DAI-A 54/01, p. 172, Jul 1993
Subject: LITERATURE, MEDIEVAL (0297); HISTORY, MEDIEVAL (0581); LITERATURE, COMPARATIVE (0295)
Abstract: Geoffrey Chaucer invented his poetry through ingeniously camouflaged mercurial figures or strategies borrowed from astronomy, mythography, alchemy, and poetry. Using the historical hermeneutics developed as investigative model by Gerald Bruns (Inventions, 1982; Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern, 1992), this study examines Chaucer's deployment of the hermeneus-interpres in simultaneously structural, emblematic, and hermeneutic functions, bridging between plot and text segments, posing in metaphors, and issuing to readers signatory invitations to hermeneutic participation in Chaucer's speculative investigations into proper and abusive applications of various forms of literality and figuration. Following experimentations and developments in this strategy from the early BD onward, this study culminates with the quasi-heretical literality of the Wife of Bath. Chaucer's earliest known Mercuries--Juno's messenger, Morpheus, the whelp, and the narrator in BD--serve coordinated emblematic and transitional purposes, structurally mediating gaps between narrative tableaux, and metaphorically representing interlingual, intertemporal, and tonal 'translations' Chaucer undertakes in the poem. The eagle of HF inherits similar mercurial functions and direct passwords. Furthermore, with this poem, Chaucer enlists in the scholastic-humanist debate over poetry's truth-status, dramatizing the divergence of the eagle's scholastic dialectic from Narrator Geffrey's rhetorical dialectic. With the Troilus, Chaucer begins to disguise his mercurial structures behind a facade of literally-constituted realism, even as he models poetically the philosophical problem of human volition. The CT preserves the paradoxical balance between allegory and realism, for each pilgrim bears a mark of Mercury. Despite her astrologically-determined identification with Venus and Mars, Alys of Bath nonetheless is herself a planetary 'daughter of Mercury' by virtue of her profession of weaving, her Lollard-related opinions and hermeneutics, and her desire for 'maistrie,' and she marries a 'son of Mercury.' Beneath her literal concern with vernacular and gender hermeneutics lies Chaucer's own figurative endorsement of vernacular learning and of the hermeneutic priority of 'charity' over logically-determined 'truth,' which distinguishes Chaucer's interest in literality from that of scholastic academics, orthodox or Wycliffite.
74. McBride, Donna Short.
A new vision for America: Hart Crane's intellectual framework for technology as alchemical image in 'The Bridge' (Crane Hart)
Order No: AAC 9221246 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS (0382) Degree: PHD Date: 1992 pp: 275
Advisor: CHANNELL, DAVID F.
Source: DAI-A 53/03, p. 811, Sep 1992
Subject: LITERATURE, AMERICAN (0591); AMERICAN STUDIES (0323)
Abstract: It is time for a re-examination of Hart Crane's place in the modernist canon. For too long, he has been relegated to the position of the intriguing but ultimately intellectually disappointing poet. The Bridge is an intricate interweaving of meanings within meanings. The layering of disparate complex intellectual ideas into a seamless whole in an intellectual framework which undergirds and stabilizes an entire epic poem is a task requiring the skills of an insightful poet and a perceptive thinker. And these are precisely the qualities in Crane's writing which have been ignored by critics.
By revealing Crane's intellectual debt to S. Foster Damon, Oswald Spengler, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Spence, I hope to undercut the heretofore unquestioned critical assumption that while an excellent wordsmith, Hart Crane was most assuredly not an intellectual poet. This assumption is simply not true. Not only did Crane utilize these men's ideas in The Bridge, but he went beyond their conclusions to create his own highly individual prophecy for the post-World War I future for America.
In The Bridge, Crane recreated the symbolic and metaphorical universe of Hermetic philosophy. Not recognizing any division between art, science, technology, and faith, Hermetic philosophy allowed Crane to be both the poet of technology and the mystic poet he always claimed to be. This is the metaphorically rich world of the chymical wedding. Embracing the alchemist's art of transmutation of base metal into the gold of the philosopher's stone, Crane fused ancient myth and the machines of modern technology to forge his philosopher's stone--the Brooklyn Bridge. In so doing, he brought back into fruitful union that which western culture had mistakenly separated: art and technology, magic and science, faith and reason, the male principle and the female principle, the original Atlanteans and their descendents--both Native and European--in America. In The Bridge, Crane pictures a modern world in which the ancient Hermetic arts again work their "magic" upon machines, the cosmos, and humans transmuting all together into Hermetic wholeness, balance, and harmony.
75. McIntosh, Christopher.
The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason. Eighteenth Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe and its Relationship to the Enlightenment.
Ph.D. thesis. Oxford.
76. Mebane, John Spencer.
Art and magic in Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakespeare: the occult tradition in 'Dr. Faustus,' 'The Alchemist,' and 'The Tempest.'
Order No: AAC 7511132 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: EMORY UNIVERSITY (0665) Degree: PHD Date: 1974 pp: 240
Source: DAI-A 35/11, p. 7316, May 1975
Subject: LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, MODERN (0589)
77. Meggison, Lauren Louise.
Keepers of the flame; Hermeticism in Yeats, H.D., and Borges (Kabbalah, Gnosticism, England, United states, Argentina, Doolittle)
Order No: AAC 8710250 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE (0030) Degree: PHD
Date: 1987 pp: 281
Source: DAI-A 48/02, p. 386, Aug 1987
Subject:LITERATURE, COMPARATIVE (0295); LITERATURE, ENGLISH (0593); LITERATURE, AMERICAN (0591)
Abstract: Hermeticism has often been relegated to a minor and arcane role in established literatures and literary criticism. Hermetic literatures have operated primarily as hidden and oral traditions and therefore have not been as readily available as more conventional written literatures. Hermetic studies are beginning to enjoy a renaissance due to the study of myth and mythic language and the incorporation of psychoanalytic theory in literary criticism with the theories of Freud, Jung, and Lacan.
Yeats, H.D., and Borges, roughly contemporaries, rely on hermetic allusions to increase symbolic potency in their writings. Hermetic imagery surpasses the richness of ordinary symbolic language by stimulating the deep structures of memory and activating what Yeats would call "The Great Mind," what Jung would term "The Collective Unconscious," and what I would suggest is an "archetypal language." An introductory analysis of the relationship between poetry and the sacred explores the historical genderizing of language and perception which leads to the repression of the feminine and the irrational in language and culture. These repressed elements surface in the literary privileging of lunar imagery, the biological privileging lunar time, and the appropriation of pagan, matriarchal elements by the failed patriarchy of Christianity.
Robert Graves' studies of the ancient poetic colleges of the Druids and the tree alphabets of ancient and modern Irish contextualize Yeats' imagery. The Celtic Revival of the 1890's and Yeats use of the kabbalistic rose are considered in his early poetry; "The Two Trees" provides a model of the Sephirotic Tree of Life and Crazy Jane and the Bishop provide Yeats' contrast of pagan and Christian elements in Words for Music Perhaps. H.D.'s Trilogy, Sagesse, and Hermetic Definition invoke Isis and alchemical imagery to emphasize the materiality of language and effect its transformation. Borges' "Una vindicacion de la Cabala" and "Casas Como Angeles" parody gnosticism and Ruben Dario's modernismo. The tiger is a central alchemical image. "The Library of Babel" is an architectural version of the kabbalistic tree. Borges' inversion of lunar and solar imagery suggest "The Divine Marriage" of the alchemist's athanor.
78. Meillassoux le Cerf, Micheline.
Dom Pernety et son milieu (1716-1796). Contribution a l'histoire de la sensibilite et des idees la second moite de XVIIIeme siecle.
Nature : Doctorat d'etat. Discipline : Histoire. Date : 1988. University : Paris 4. Director : Chaunu, Pierre. Registration number : 87PA040095.
English summary : Pernety's life spans the whole of the xviiith century and his various activities provide a fairly good summing up of that period. As a Benedictine monk in Saint-Maur, he lived at Saint Germain-des-Pres abbey and took an active part in the intellectual life of his time. His first writings dealt with quite miscelleanous subjects : a handbook for the Benedictine order, a dictionary of painting, a book of fables, a mythical-hermetic dictionary, a relation of travels in south America. After a year spent with Bougainville's expedition to the Falkland islands (Malouines), he was directly involved in the inner contestation crises which shook the Benedictine order twenty years before the French revolution. For reasons still unknown, he left monastic life and became King Frederick II's librarian in Berlin. The books he wrote then deal with psychology and physiognomony : he also translated Swedenborg's works. With Brumore and Grabianka, he was one of the founders of the Illuminists of Berlin, a group that later moved to Avignon. He wrote the transcription of the book of the holy word kept in Avignon, a pamphlet gathering the questions and answers exchanged by the Illuminists with a mysterious heavenly oracle. At the time when the group, momentarily scattered, was reforming in Comtat, the French revolution broke out in Avignon, and that land, still a pontifical dominion, asked to be united to France. Pernety was to die in 1796 and the group of the Illuminists did not outlive him. Thus the originality of Pernety's itinerary can be seen : it is remarkable for its great diversity. Pernety was indeed a typical man of the xviiith century, who took part in the activities of the most traditional religious order, in the movement of the age of the enlightenment as well as in irrational research such as prevailed towards the end of that troubled century. The study of Dom Pernety, altogether a monk, a thinker, a traveller, an alchemist ... "
79. Messenger, Joan Veronice.
Marcel Duchamp: Alchemical symbolism in and relationships between the Large Glass and the Etant Donnes.
Order No: AAC 1310678 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LONG BEACH (6080) Degree: MA Date: 1977 pp: 161
Source: MAI 16/01, p. 30, Spring 1978
Subject: FINE ARTS (0357)
80. Moran, Patrick Edwin.
Explorations of Chinese metaphysical concepts: The history of some key terms from the beginnings to Chu Hsi (1130-1200)
Order No: AAC 8326318 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA (0175) Degree: PHD Date: 1983 pp: 439
Source: DAI-A 44/07, p. 2172, Jan 1984
Subject: RELIGION, HISTORY OF (0320)
Abstract: Statement of the Problem. A key concept in Neo-Confucianism, "pienhua ch'i-chih chih hsing" (changing the nature found manifest in materialized lifebreath) was previously inadequately explained.
Procedures and Methods. Component ideas were identified and the historical development of each was analyzed to provide a fully grounded understanding of the whole concept.
Results. T'ai-chi or transcendent li (pattern-source) is potential and ground for all being and pattern (li) in the world. T'ai-chi actualizes itself on multiple levels of potentiality-and-actuality from primary yin and yang, which are only actualized to the extent of having the simplest attributes, on down to concrete things, which have relatively little potential remaining. All levels are characterizable in yin-yang terms. The yin-yang pattern of being in the world is hsing (nature). The actuality of being in the world is ch'i (lifebreath). Ch'i exists in fractions of different degrees of substantiality corresponding to various levels of potentiality-and-actuality. Relatively more substantial fractions are called chih (substrate). Chih evolves ch'i, and ch'i condenses to form chih. Ch'i-chih is dual-phase ch'i chih. To transform ch'i chih (connoting character) is to transform its yin-yang pattern on multiple levels of potentiality-and-actuality with the intent of influencing the ch'i (connoting activity) of a being by modifying its chih (substrate). Psychological change involves transmutation of one's ontological underpinning (a clear consonnance with Chinese alchemical tradition). The hsin (heart, mind) is a resonant "structure" in levels of potentiality-and-actuality ranging from the concrete to the t'ai-chi. Appropriateness of the yin-yang status of those levels determines limits on one's inner moral motivations and ultimately of one's ground of being and the ground of all being and ethical value, the t'ai-chi. The final goal of spiritual transformation (pien-hua ch'i-chih chih hsing) is to facilitate awareness of the core source of ethical being.
Conclusion. Previous interpretations that called pien-hua ch'i-chih chih hsing 'changing the physical nature' or 'changing the characteristics of the stuff composed of material force' can be usefully broadened to incorporate the ideas discussed above.
81. Newman, William Royall
The Summa Perfectionis and late medieval alchemy: A study of chemical traditions, techniques, and theories in thirteenth century italy. (volumes i - iv)
Order No: AAC 8620516 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: HARVARD UNIVERSITY (0084) Degree: PHD Date: 1986 pp: 1398
Source: DAI-A 47/06, p. 2294, Dec 1986
Subject: HISTORY OF SCIENCE (0585)
Abstract: The centerpiece of my thesis is the Summa perfectionis traditionally ascribed to "Geber" (the quasi-mythical Islamic alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan). The importance of this text has long been acknowledged: George Sarton, for example, referred to it as "the main chemical text-book of medieval Christendom" (Introduction to the History of Science, II, 1043). Among the Summa's contributions may be numbered a full-blown corpuscular theory of matter, the first thorough description of chemical apparatus in the Latin West, and the most complete description of assaying techniques written before the sixteenth century: these topics are all analyzed in my thesis. Despite the Summa's attribution to an Arabic "Geber," numerous discrepancies have led scholars since the nineteenth century to believe that its author was really an occidental. This has been quite difficult to prove, however, not only because the author of the Summa refuses to cite other authors by name, but also because he has re-written most of his sources. Therefore we have in the Summa a text of considerable sophistication which names no authors and whose own author's precise dates, identity, and geographical origin have remained up to now unknown. My disinterment of a previously unnoticed manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, in conjunction with a discovery made by the historian of science Julius Ruska in 1935, allowed me to prove that the author of the Summa was actually a Franciscan named "Paul of Taranto," who lectured in the monastery of the Friars Minor in Assisi during the second half of the thirteenth century. This discovery is rigorously developed and proven in my thesis, which contains two auxiliary texts also written by Paul of Taranto (De investigatione perfectionis and Theorica et practica), in addition to the Summa perfectionis. I then proceed to show that Paul's ideas underwent a marked evolution, and that his ultimate goal was to reform alchemy so that it would not only conform to the norms of scholastic science, but would rest on its own self-evident principles. The result of Paul's theoretical development, the Summa perfectionis, displays the same experimental spirit that may be seen in the exemplary works of such thirteenth century scientists as Pierre de Maricourt and Dietrich of Freiberg.
82. Niculescu, Luminita Irene.
From hermeticism to hermeneutics: Alchemical metaphors in Renaissance literature.
Order No: AAC 8201142 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES (0031) Degree: PHD Date: 1981 pp: 180
Source: DAI-A 42/08, p. 3590, Feb 1982
Subject: LITERATURE, COMPARATIVE (0295)
Abstract: Ever since the first sign-maker "gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild beasts" (Genesis 2:20), man has assumed the task of defining and interpreting the intricate relations between concepts and words. Inquiries into the nature and function of language--as both container and expresser of ideas--have trapped many a soul in the Daedalian labyrinth: Plato's epistemology, Aristotle's teleology, rhetorical functionalism, the esoteric doctrine associated with Hermes Trismegistus are only some of the precursors of modern semiotics, or semiology, or linguistics, or psycholinguistics.
I do not propose to draw up a list of all the occasions on which language has been the object of investigation; such an undertaking would lie beyond the scope of this study which is to attempt to illuminate one area of Renaissance poetics by studying analogies between Renaissance Hermeticism and Neoplatonism. For my present purpose, I have selected representative texts from the period "which, with a convenient vagueness, we call the Renaissance." Along with a discussion of major thematic streams in the respective works, I will examine the role of the Renaissance poet as re-creator--a powerful challenge that Rabelais and Shakespeare faced and resolved, each in his own peculiar way.
The complexity and ambiguity that pertain to Renaissance literary texts surpass by far my analysis thereof; Renaissance hermeneutics involves such a variety of topoi in so many spheres of epistemological and semiological research that it is almost impossible to make claims of thoroughness of investigation. The issue is further complicated by the fact that, in the Renaissance, hermeneutics was practised on a very wide scale; as Montaigne complained, "there is more work in interpreting interpretations than in interpreting things." With these caveats in mind, let us now turn to the topic of Renaissance Hermeticism.
83. Noalhyt, Martine.
D'une homologie relative entre alchimie et grande cuisine au XVIIeme siecle en France.
Nature : Doctorat (Nouveau Doctorat). Discipline : Sociologie. Date : 1992. University : Paris 5. Director : Thomas, Louis-Vinc. Registration number : 92PA05H041.
English summary : After one hundred years of silence, cooks, in France, at the end of the xviith century, had published a new culinary books. This included recipes which did not seem to conform to the same rules of composition, new ingredients were highly considered. The medieval lords cooking responded to dietetic principles inherited from Galean medecine, this one, child of Aristotle representation of the subject : a subtle game between the four elements and their quality organised the culinary art. Smoothness was in the centre of every alimentary composition : Obtaining it meant combining work between tastes, revealing each of the qualities (hot, cold, dry, wet) of the ingredient. The decreasing prestige of the Galean medecine and his corollary : dietetic bonded to the success of the Paracelsan medicine (Iatrochimie), introduced cooks to reconsider, unconsciousness, the rules of the conversion of the culinary substances. The Paracelsan medicine had a new manner to consider the ultimate elements of the subject : earth, water, air and fire gradually disappeared to the advantage of mercury, sulphur and salt. The law of the composition who governed the reciprocal action of peripateticians elements made soom for breaking open, extraction, purification and coagulation of the subject ..."
84. O'Connor, Kathleen Malone.
The alchemical creation of life (Takwin) and other concepts of genesis in medieval Islam.
Order No: AAC 9503804 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA (0175) Degree: PHD Date: 1994 pp: 435
Advisor: SELLS, MICHAEL A.; MATTER, E. ANN
Source: DAI-A 55/09, p. 2869, Mar 1995
Subject: RELIGION, HISTORY OF (0320); LITERATURE, MIDDLE EASTERN (0315); HISTORY, MEDIEVAL (0581)
Abstract: The concept of the alchemical creation of life (takwin) found within medieval Islamic alchemy expresses the metaphysical and material process of the generation of life (animal, vegetable, and mineral). The textual occurrence of this concept and 'experiment' within the works of a semi-legendary eighth-century alchemist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, is examined through selective translation and analysis. This expression of artificial generation is compared and contrasted with the other concepts which relate to the creation and generation of living things from the broader spectra of medieval Islamic alchemical, magical, mystical, and cosmological works, as well as from Islamic revelatory and prophetic literature (Qur'an and Hadith Qudsi). This work explores the religious nature of alchemical creation as a theurgic act. From the emic perspective of the alchemist, the act of takwin was an emulation of the divine creative and life-giving powers of Genesis and Resurrection and tapped the physical and spiritual forces in nature. At the same time it was an act through which the alchemist was inwardly transformed and purified, a spiritual regeneration. Such an act highlights the creative and often uneasy interrelationship of Islamic magic and science with Islamic revelation and tradition. Through the examination of alchemical creation as both a magical and profoundly religious act, this dissertation offers a reflection on the religious nature of magic within Islam and suggests this perspective as a useful theoretical approach to the subject of magic within the history of religions.
85. Oelke, Karl E.
The rude daughter: Alchemy in Poe's early poetry.
Order No: AAC 7228075 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (0054) Degree: PHD Date: 1972 pp: 243
Source: DAI-A 33/05, p. 2388, Nov 1972
Subject: LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, MODERN (0589)
86. O'Hara, Jacqueline Ann.
'Les OEuvres Sainctes' of Jean Auvray: A critical edition and an alchemical study.
Order No: AAC 8109487 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA (0130) Degree: PHD Date: 1980 pp: 328
Source: DAI-A 41/11, p. 4732, May 1981
Subject: LITERATURE, ROMANCE (0313)
Abstract: Little is known about Jean Auvray, an early seventeenth century poet from Rouen. Among his works is a collection of poetry entitled Les Oeuvres Sainctes, first published in 1626. Because critics generally have looked with favor upon his secular verse but dismissed his religious poetry as unworthy of notice, Les Oeuvres Sainctes have remained in almost total oblivion. It is the purpose of this dissertation to present the 1634 text of Les Oeuvres Sainctes in a critical edition that reveals Jean Auvray as a Norman poet laureate whose religious poetry is not as ordinary as the critics thought. For underlying these poems which ostensibly celebrate the virgin mother of Christ, especially in her Immaculate Conception, there emerges an elaborately constructed alchemical treatise. The discovery of this scientific, philosophical, mystical substructure now places Les Oeuvres Sainctes alongside the acknowledged works of such alchemist/writers as Michel Maier, George Ripley, Nicolas Flamel and Cyrano de Bergerac. In describing the Immaculate Virgin, the epitome of perfection/beauty, the poet parallels the well-known steps in the alchemical process whereby in guise of the pursuit of the union of the Above and the Below, base metals are transformed into gold and ultimately the Philosophers' Stone is obtained. As the Immaculate Virgin was the sine qua non for the birth of the God-man, so mercury, known as vierge in alchemical parlance, was the essential element in the elaboration of the perfected Stone. Besides a general consideration of alchemy the study contains a detailed analysis of certain poems of the "parlante peinture" which most explicitly reveal Jean Auvray as a Christian poet/alchemist/adept who, in this collection, blends alchemy with religious concepts. They are (1) "Suite de Chants Royaux sur le concept de la Vierge," which emphasizes the specialized vocabulary and the successive stages in the alchemical process--the nigredo, the albedo and the rubedo; (2) "Invitation aux Poetes," the first poem in the collection, and (3) "Paralelles du Mont Parnasse avec le Mont Carmel," the last one. Furthermore it was found that Les Oeuvres Sainctes have a three-part structure like the Great Work (le Grand Oeuvre), the name given to the alchemist's life-long pursuit whose goal was the acquisition of the Stone, oneness with heaven and earth. The printed text begins with a prefatory letter and an Ode by the publisher and a Sonnet by an unidentifiable "A.A.". The "Invitation aux Poetes" is followed by the "Suite De Chants Royaux," ten in number. They in turn are complemented by Stances, Sonnets, Odes and stanzas of various lengths subsumed under general titles which present sequentially the life of Christ, e.g., "Sur l'Annonciation," "Sur la Nativite du Sauveur." The final poem is a comparison of le Mont Parnasse with le Mont Carmel, of the profane source with the religious one. To facilitate the reading of the text there is a section "Glossary and Notes." An Appendix is devoted to alchemical terminology. The bibliography lists recent works on alchemy as well as classical treatises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
87. Olsen, Cristina
A philosophical inquiry into the alchemy of light and dark in the nuptial union of Sanjuanist spirituality (Spain)
Order No: AAC 1347870 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF INTEGRAL STUDIES (0392) Degree: MA Date: 1992 pp: 144
Source: MAI 30/04, p. 1055, Winter 1992
Subject: PHILOSOPHY (0422); RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY OF (0322); THEOLOGY (0469)
Abstract: The following thesis introduces the alchemical language of the Sixteenth Century Spanish mystic and theologian, St. John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz). Primary focus is on his usage of light and dark themes as found in alchemical literature, identified as the "chiaroscuro" of the soul. First, major themes in Sanjuanist spirituality are developed, such as the nature of God, Grace, the courtship between God and the soul, and the stages of night. Then, major themes in alchemy are identified in terms of Sanjuanist spirituality, paying particular attention to Hermetical sources. Finally, the stages of Purgation, Illumination and Union are illustrated in terms of the chiaroscuro of the soul as set forth in Sanjuanist spirituality and alchemy. An original translation of the Living Flame of Love is offered as an Addendum.
88. Oreovicz, Cheryl Zechman.
Eirenaeus Philoponos Philalethes 'The Marrow of Alchemy' (London, 1654-55): A Critical Edition.
Order No: AAC 7314034 ProQuest - Dissertation Abstracts
School: THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY (0176) Degree: PHD Date: 1972 pp: 273
Source: DAI-A 33/12, p. 6880, Jun 1973
Subject: LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, GENERAL (0586)