Title :

The literary distortions of alchemy

Author(s) :

Joly, Bernard [Auteur]
Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163 [STL]

Scientific editor(s) :

Margareth Hagen and Margery Vibe Skagen

Book title :

Literature and Chemistry. Elective Affinities

Publisher :

Aarhus University Press

Publication place :

Aarhus

Publication date :

2013

ISBN :

978-87-7124-174-7

English keyword(s) :

alchemy
chemistry
Hawthorne
Meyrink
Yourcenar

HAL domain(s) :

Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences
Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Philosophie

English abstract : [en]

The historian of science is often surprised by representations of alchemists found in novels in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These strange and fascinating characters, often endowed with supernatural powers, offer ...
Show more >The historian of science is often surprised by representations of alchemists found in novels in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These strange and fascinating characters, often endowed with supernatural powers, offer a very interesting description which do not seem to correspond to what the alchemists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries really were. By drawing on three examples (The scarlet letter by Nathaliel Hawthorne, The angel at the western window by Gustav Meyrink and L’oeuvre au noir by Marguerite Yourcenar), I would like to analyse the causes and effects of these distortions which contributed to forge a modern and unreal image of alchemy.Show less >

Language :

Anglais

Audience :

Internationale

Popular science :

Non

Collections :

• Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

Source :

Harvested from HAL