Elizabethan occult poetics : exploring practice and knowledge in English poetry / Rachel White.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

White, Rachel, author.

Series:

English Association studies ; 14.

English Association monographs. English at the interface ; 14

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English poetry--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English poetry.

Occultism in literature.

English poetry--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

262 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2025.

Summary:

"Elizabethan Occult Poetics argues that occult tradition influenced the development of vernacular poetics during the sixteenth century and explores the ways in which discourses from the occult tradition, ranging from the scientific to the magical, were actively absorbed into both the theory and practice of English poetics. This study examines the absorption of occult discourses into the theory and practice of poetry as well as their presence in poetic content. Beginning with John Dee's fascination with the geometrical foundation of alphabets and language, Elizabethan Occult Poetics goes back to 'tittles and jots' and the building blocks of affective language, before turning to the attempts of Philip Sidney and his contemporaries to create an efficacious English poetic tradition. The second part of the book focuses on the incorporation of occult discourses as content and writers' negotiations of competing theories between the arcane and the scientific through chapters on cosmology and light in the work of Giordano Bruno and Fulke Greville, optics in George Chapman's vernacular poetry, and magnetism in Edmund Spenser's The Fairie Queene. This study shows that sixteenth-century poets pursued an affective and efficacious poetic tradition via the incorporation of occult discourses in theory, practice, and content."--Back cover.

Contents:

'Outside the confines of the language': John Dee's occult poetics

'Words set in delightful proportion': measuring occult poetics

'To pass into England': Giordano Bruno's and Fulke Greville's transcultural occult poetics

'So cunningly to optick reason wrought': George Chapman's optical occult poetics

'Loadstone to hearts, and loadstarre to all eyes': Elizabeth and occult poetics.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-256) and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781836244783

1836244789

OCLC:

1513571069

Publisher Number:

90103711644

CIPO000262630