The Transmutations of Arthur Machen: Alchemy in 'The Great God Pan' and The Three Impostors
In their biography of Arthur Machen, Reynolds and Charlton note the influence of the alchemist Thomas Vaughan on his work and assert that Helen Vaughan is transformed into first matter in 'The Great God Pan' (1894). The influence of alchemy on Machen's work was eclipsed in the 1990s b...
| Главный автор: | |
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| Формат: | Электронный ресурс Статья |
| Язык: | Английский |
| Проверить наличие: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Опубликовано: |
[2015]
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| В: |
Literature and theology
Год: 2015, Том: 29, Выпуск: 1, Страницы: 18-32 |
| Индексация IxTheo: | AZ Новая религия TJ Новое время TK Новейшее время VA Философия |
| Online-ссылка: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Итог: | In their biography of Arthur Machen, Reynolds and Charlton note the influence of the alchemist Thomas Vaughan on his work and assert that Helen Vaughan is transformed into first matter in 'The Great God Pan' (1894). The influence of alchemy on Machen's work was eclipsed in the 1990s by the tendency of scholars to map degeneration theory onto Machen's work. In this article, I unpack key alchemical concepts and demonstrate how they relate to the transmutations of Machen's characters. I argue that not only had Machen never heard of degeneration in the pseudo-scientific sense of the word, but also the animosity he displayed towards scientific materialism makes it highly unlikely that he would have knowingly incorporated the concept in his work. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4623 |
| Второстепенные работы: | Enthalten in: Literature and theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/litthe/frt045 |
