Overview
- Received an honourable mention from the jury of the Italian Book Prize “Premio di Anglistica Sergio Perosa”, 2020-22
- Considers the significant connections between alchemy, medicine, and women in early modern England
- Explores the intersection of literary and scientific disciplines within Shakespeare’s macrotext
- Offers insights into the status of alchemy in the ages of Queen Elizabeth and King James
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (PLSM)
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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“Emperors, kings and princes desired this science”. Elizabethan and Jacobean England
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Front Matter
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The Alchemical Performance of The Winter’s Tale. A Reading of the Play
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Front Matter
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Jacobean Politics and Religion in the Play
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Reviews
“Zamparo’s study deserves recognition as an in-depth work on alchemy and, unusually, a single play. The book is meticulously researched with a wide variety of alchemical examples from both England and Europe, and is filled with an array of images which help to give a sense of the richness of alchemical literature. … This book is engaging, thoroughly researched, and is an important contribution to the field.” (Rachel White, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, December 7, 2023)
“This book highlights the role alchemy played in practice, and above all, in imagination, in Elizabethan and Jacobean culture, by taking the example of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: the allusions to alchemy’s procedures and concepts, both in plot and in terminology, would have been immediately recognizable to his English audience. Zamparo reminds modern readers of the creative potential of alchemical imagery in the ambience of Shakespeare’s late plays.”
—Charles Burnett, Warburg Institute, University of London, UK
“This intelligent book provides a fresh approach to alchemy and Hermetic symbolism in early modern English culture. It displays, in a clear critical style, an impressive knowledge of the original material. A dense and wide-ranging reading of The Winter’s Tale proves the unquestionable presence in the text of the alchemical imagery of rebirth and reconciliation. A learned book, which deserves to be read beyond academic boundaries.”
—Loretta Innocenti, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy
“Martina Zamparo’s volume provides an exhaustive and original study of The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s last plays. After a thorough and meticulous survey of Hermetic, Neoplatonic and alchemic culture in late-Renaissance Britain, the author convincingly documents Shakespeare’s direct and profound knowledge of these disciplines: moving from her deep investigation of The Winter’s Tale in the light of all the stages of the opus alchymicum, Martina Zamparo analyses the salvific role of women and the relevance of alchemy in Shakespeare’s romance, shedding light on the central presence of water, on the bard’s idea of time and on his representation of royalty as the union of the male and female principle.”
—Professor Milena Romero Allué, University of Udine, Italy
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Alchemy, Paracelsianism, and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale
Authors: Martina Zamparo
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05167-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-05166-1Published: 06 October 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-05169-2Published: 07 October 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-05167-8Published: 05 October 2022
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXI, 377
Number of Illustrations: 4 b/w illustrations, 24 illustrations in colour
Topics: Early Modern/Renaissance Literature, Drama, Theatre History, History of Britain and Ireland, Cultural Studies, Audio-Visual Culture