Title The alchemy of conquest : science, religion, and the secrets of the New World / Ralph Bauer

Published Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2019 ©2019

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 649 pages) Series Writing the early Americas Writing the early Americas. Contents Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Alchemy and Apocalypse in Macondo -- Part I: The Alchemy of Exception -- 1. The Hermeneutics of Secrecy: Aristotle and Discovery -- 2. Egyptian Gold: Alchemy and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages -- 3. The Alchemy of Conversion: Ramón Llull's Chivalric Missionary Science -- Part II: The Alchemy of Conquest -- 4. The Secrets of the World: Christopher Columbus's Ecstatic Materialism -- 5. The Llullian Renaissance and European Expansionism 6. Physicians of the Soul: The Alchemy of Reduction and Ethno­demonology in Early America -- Part III: Lucretius's New World -- 7. Cannibal Heterotopias in the Sixteenth Century -- 8. Homunculus americanus -- 9. The Blood of the Dragon: Alchemy and New World Materia Medica -- Part IV: The Alchemy of the White Legend -- 10. Walter Raleigh's Legends: Black, Gold, and White -- 11. Things of Darkness: Alchemy, Ethno­demonology, and the Protestant Cant of Conquest -- 12. Eating Bacon: Alchemy and Cannibal Science -- Coda: Alexander von Humboldt, Alchemist of the Tropics -- Notes -- Index Summary "This book explores the role that the verbal, conceptual, and visual language of alchemy played in the literature of the conquest of America and in the rise of an early modern paradigm of discovery in both science and international law. While the roots of the modern 'conquistadorial' attitude toward nature lie in late medieval alchemy, which fused Aristotelian reason with Christian apocalypticism in the militant context of crusade and spiritual conquest, this book argues that the modern idea of what it means to discover something has a colonial history in which conquest legitimated the modern (Baconian) idea of discovery by underwriting it with religious messianism and early modern state power. Thus, the book traces the intellectual and spiritual legacies of such late medieval alchemists as Roger Bacon, Arnald of Villanova, and Ramon Llull in the early modern literature of the conquest of America in texts written by authors such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, José de Acosta, Nicolás Monardes, Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, Francis Bacon, and Alexander von Humboldt"-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on January 21, 2020) Subject Alchemy -- Early works to 1800 -- History and criticism LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. Alchemy Discoveries in geography SUBJECT America -- Early accounts to 1600 -- History and criticism America -- Discovery and exploration. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85004240 Subject America Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Early works Form Electronic book LC no. 2018059506 ISBN 9780813942551 0813942551 9780813942544 0813942543

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