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John Dee And Prospero: Alchemy, Angels, And Empire In The Tempest, Iovan Stefanov

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For John Dee (1527-1609), like many others in the sixteenth century, the divide between politics, science, and the occult was permeable. At the height of Dee’s career, he had assembled the largest private library in England and built bibliographic networks of likeminded intellectuals from lending and sales. His consultations varied from explanations of Euclidean geometry for sailors to providing magical advice for Elizabeth I and other European monarchs. Dee is simultaneously important to both early modern science and esoterica. The aim of this thesis is to illuminate the ways in which his politics, his colonial projects, and his occult thought …