Description

Book Synopsis
Alchemical Mercury is the first comprehensive study to consider alchemy, from the past through the present and beyond, in relation to literary and visual theory.

Trade Review
"This book argues that ambivalence is at the basis of alchemy, and is something of a total psychic and social fact. More than its ends, the ways of alchemy inform and help to explain the dynamics of life itself. Few studies have the dazzling erudition and broad scope of this one. Pinkus takes literary and scientific texts out of the pigeonholes dug for them by the history of science, treating Francesco Colonna alongside Pier Paolo Pasolini; Riccardo's theory of economy with folklore; Lavoisier and the marriage of science and desire through nuptial painting; and The Vanishing in the context of steganography." -- Tom Conley * Harvard University *
"Pinkus produces, as if magically, a serious intellectual question out of something that, for most of us, remains a commonplace idea with little but folkloric content." -- David Wills * SUNY Albany *

Alchemical Mercury

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    A Hardback by Karen Pinkus

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      Publisher: Stanford University Press
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 09/11/2009
      ISBN13: 9780804760324, 978-0804760324
      ISBN10: 0804760322
      Also in:
      Literary studies: general

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Alchemical Mercury is the first comprehensive study to consider alchemy, from the past through the present and beyond, in relation to literary and visual theory.

      Trade Review
      "This book argues that ambivalence is at the basis of alchemy, and is something of a total psychic and social fact. More than its ends, the ways of alchemy inform and help to explain the dynamics of life itself. Few studies have the dazzling erudition and broad scope of this one. Pinkus takes literary and scientific texts out of the pigeonholes dug for them by the history of science, treating Francesco Colonna alongside Pier Paolo Pasolini; Riccardo's theory of economy with folklore; Lavoisier and the marriage of science and desire through nuptial painting; and The Vanishing in the context of steganography." -- Tom Conley * Harvard University *
      "Pinkus produces, as if magically, a serious intellectual question out of something that, for most of us, remains a commonplace idea with little but folkloric content." -- David Wills * SUNY Albany *

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