|
|
Article: The Mirror of Alchemy: Alchemical Ideas and Images in Manuscripts and Books from Antiquity to the Seventeenth-Century.
- Article from:
- Renaissance Quarterly
- Article date:
- March 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 The Renaissance Society of America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Beyond the preface, acknowledgments, and list of color plates, this handsome volume consists of four chapters plus a brief conclusion, a glossary of alchemical terms, bibliography, appendix, and indexes. It has two closely related aims: to serve as an introduction to alchemy, including its history, concepts, terms and presuppositions, and to illustrate alchemical writings with particular emphasis on "material from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, when the production and transmission of alchemical texts were at their height" (7). Throughout most of its history, alchemy was important not only as a legitimate (even if not easily defined) activity but also as it ...