How can we account; in a rigorous way; for alchemys ubiquity? We think of alchemy as the transformation of a base material (usually lead) into gold; but "alchemy" is a word in wide circulation in everyday life; often called upon to fulfill a metaphoric duty as the magical transformation of materials. Almost every culture and time has had some form of alchemy. This book looks at alchemy; not at any one particular instance along the historical timeline; not as a practice or theory; not as a mode of redemption; but as a theoretical problem; linked to real gold and real production in the world. What emerges as the least common denominator or "intensive property" of alchemy is ambivalence; the impossible and paradoxical coexistence of two incompatible elements. Alchemical Mercury moves from antiquity; through the golden age of alchemy in the Dutch seventeenth century; to conceptual art; to alternative fuels; stopping to think with writers such as Dante; Goethe; Hoffmann; the Grimm Brothers; George Eliot; and Marx. Eclectic and wide-ranging; this is the first study to consider alchemy in relation to literary and visual theory in a comprehensive way.
#2283986 in eBooks 1999-10-28 1999-10-28File Name: B003FSTFAU
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