The Alchemical Republic: A Reading of ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’

  • Lyndy Abraham
  • Michael Wilding

Abstract

But the opposition is not simply a matter of the displacement of the literary arts by the political arts. These arts have been remarked often enough by commentators.2 But one art that has received no acknowledgement, and yet permeates the ‘Horatian Ode’, is the art of alchemy.

Keywords

Great Work Paradise Lost Theatrical Metaphor Poetical Work Memorable Scene 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. 3.
    Edward Kelly, The Englishman’s Two Excellent Treatises on the Philosopher’s Stone together with The Theatre of Terrestrial Astronomy translated by A. E. Waite (1893) (Largs: Banton Press, 1991), pp. 113, 50.Google Scholar
  2. 7.
    See Johannes Fabricius, Alchemy: The Medieval Alchemists and their Royal Art (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1976), p. 98.Google Scholar
  3. 9.
    Charles Nicholl, The Chemical Theatre (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 130.Google Scholar
  4. 10.
    John Donne, The Complete English Poems, ed. A. J. Smith (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), p. 72.Google Scholar
  5. 12.
    François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. J. M. Cohen (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955), p. 650.Google Scholar
  6. 15.
    Johann Andreae, The Hermetick Romance, or The Chymical Wedding written in high Dutch by Christian Rosenkreutz trans. Edward Foxcroft (printed by A. Sowle, London,1690), p. 199.Google Scholar
  7. 18.
    Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens, ed. H. M. E. de Jong (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), p. 148.Google Scholar
  8. 23.
    Francis Mercurius van Helmont, One Hundred Fifty Three Chymical Aphorisms ed. Eremeta Suburbanus (London, 1688), p. 28.Google Scholar
  9. 28.
    Michael Wilding (ed.), Introduction to Marvell: Modern Judgements (London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar
  10. 36.
    Jacques van Lennep, Alchimie: Contribution à l’histoire de l’art alchimique (Brussels: Crédit Communal de Belgique, 1985), p. 104.Google Scholar
  11. 41.
    Thomas N. Corns, Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. 47.
    Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. N. H. Keeble (London: Everyman Library, 1995), pp. 104–5.Google Scholar
  13. 49.
    William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 237.Google Scholar
  14. 56.
    Warren Chernaik, The Poet’s Time: Politics and Religion in the Work of Andrew Marvell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 15.Google Scholar
  15. 62.
    Allen G. Debus, Chemistry, Alchemy and the New Philosophy, 1550–1700 (London: Studies in the History of Science and Medicine, Variorum Imprints, 1987), pp. 4–7.Google Scholar
  16. 70.
    Bruce A. Rosenberg, ‘Annus Mirabilis Distilled’, Publications of the Modern Language Association, 79 (1964), 25–84.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Lyndy Abraham and Michael Wilding 1999

Authors and Affiliations

  • Lyndy Abraham
  • Michael Wilding

There are no affiliations available

Personalised recommendations