Shakespeare, alchemy and the creative imagination : the Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint / Margaret Healy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Healy, Margaret, 1955-

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Sonnets.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Lover's complaint.

Sonnets, English--History and criticism.

Sonnets, English.

Alchemy in literature.

Physical Description:

x, 260 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Summary:

Shakespeare's Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint constitute a rich tapestry of rhetorical play about Renaissance love in all its guises. A significant strand of this is spiritual alchemy: working the 'metal' of the mind through meditation on love, memory work and intense imagination. Healy demonstrates how this process of anguished soul work- construed as essential to inspired poetic making - is woven into these poems, accounting for their most enigmatic imagery and urgency of tone. The esoteric philosophy of late Renaissance Neoplatonic alchemy, which embraced bawdy sexual symbolism and was highly fashionable in European intellectual circles, facilitated Shakespeare's poetry. Arguing that Shakespeare's incorporation of alchemical textures throughout his late works is indicative of an artistic stance promoting religious toleration and unity, this book sets out a crucial new framework for interpreting the 1609 poems, and transforms our understanding of Shakespeare's art. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Alchemical contexts 14

2 Lovely boy 57

Part I Love, marriage and alchemical procreation 57

Part II 'Suttill numbers': 'conjunctio' by arithmetic, music and divine geometry 77

3 The dark mistress and the art of blackness 98

Part I In praise of blackness 98

Part II Will's dark mistress II5

4 A Lovers Complaint by William Shake-speare 131

5 Inner looking, alchemy and the creative imagination 157

Part I The inward turn: doing 'mind' in 'character' 157

Part II The alchemical 'making' mind 174

6 Conclusion: Shakespeare's poetics of love and religious toleration 195.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781107004047

1107004047

OCLC:

711053418