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Full-Text Articles in European Languages and Societies
Transmuting John Gower: Elias Ashmole’S Hermetic Reading Of Gower’S Jason And The Golden Fleece, Curtis Runstedler
Transmuting John Gower: Elias Ashmole’S Hermetic Reading Of Gower’S Jason And The Golden Fleece, Curtis Runstedler
Accessus
This article examines Elias Ashmole’s alchemical reading of John Gower’s tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece in the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652). I argue that this tale can be read as alchemical and connects to the Renaissance humanist tradition of reading classical stories as alchemical as well as Book IV of the Confessio Amantis, in which Gower depicts alchemy as the ideal form of human labour. Jason, representing the aspiring adept in this reading, is aided by his lover Medea, who represents a master alchemist with her supernatural powers, and through his intensive labours he is successful as …
John Gower's Magical Rhetoric, Georgiana Donavin
John Gower's Magical Rhetoric, Georgiana Donavin
Accessus
In Book 6 of the Confessio Amantis, telling the “Tale of Ulysses and Telegonus,” John Gower says of the former, “He was a gret rethorien / He was a gret magicien,” thereby capturing deep connections between rhetoric and magic. The seriously flawed necromancers of Book 6 exemplify only negative connections, however. Ulysses, by embracing verbal trickery and deploying his knowledge of the liberal arts for inferior aims, fails as both hero and speaker. Worse than Ulysses is Nectanabus, whose deceitful “carectes” seem to serve as a critique against spoken enchantments. Later in Book 7, however, Gower recuperates a concept …
Magic, Religion, And Science: A Special Issue, Eve Salisbury
Magic, Religion, And Science: A Special Issue, Eve Salisbury
Accessus
Preface to a special issue of Accessus on magic, religion, and science in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period.