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Early Modern Women and Alchemy, 1550-1700

Description du projet

Comment les écrivaines britanniques utilisaient l’alchimie

Les femmes représentent 30 % de la communauté scientifique, selon les statistiques de l’UNESCO. Le but de cette recherche est de prouver que l’engagement scientifique n’est pas seulement un phénomène masculin, car les femmes apportent une contribution notable à l’histoire des sciences. Le projet WALCHEMY, financé par l’UE, porte sur la révolution scientifique britannique des 16e et 17e siècles, et sur la participation des femmes à l’alchimie, l’art de la transformation chimique. Les chercheurs soutiennent que la diffusion de la typographie a favorisé les publications scientifiques sur l’alchimie, dont les connaissances étaient bien connues des écrivaines. Basée sur une littérature écrite par des femmes anglophones, cette recherche explorera l’impact de l’alchimie sur les œuvres de ces écrivaines.

Objectif

In 2017 UNESCO pointed out that only 30% of the world’s scientific researchers are women. One reason for this low statistic (according to UNESCO) is the lack of visible female role models. Feminist scholars such as Sarah Hutton, Alisha Rankin and Meredith Ray have turned to the era of the European scientific revolution – the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – to investigate women’s contribution to the history of science. This research is important because it has spotlighted women scientists from the past and demonstrated that scientific enquiry is not simply a male phenomenon. There is, however, one area in the history of science that is noticeably understudied in relation to women writers but in which they were paradoxically most active: alchemy. Lyndy Abraham and Tara Nummedal have shown that alchemical knowledge – the craft of chemical transmutation, both physical and spiritual – was widely disseminated in this period because of the invention and flourishing of printing. I will concentrate on Anglophone female authors because scholars such as Stanton Linden and Robert Schuler have foregrounded a British male alchemical literary tradition, but have overlooked women’s participation in that tradition. I will produce the first in-depth book-length study to explore the influence of alchemy on early modern Anglophone female authors’ works. In so doing, my project seeks to recover a previously unrecognized female-authored alchemical culture that privileged the transformative power of the female mind, word, body and spirit. By adding the hitherto absent dimension of women’s literary thought and practice to our understanding of the alchemical and holistic mind-set of early modern Britain, this study will make a landmark contribution to the histories of science and women’s writing. As such, it will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in women’s engagement with science and the cross-fertilization between scientific discourses and literary language.

Régime de financement

MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF

Coordinateur

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Contribution nette de l'UE
€ 175 572,48
Adresse
RAPENBURG 70
2311 EZ Leiden
Pays-Bas

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Région
West-Nederland Zuid-Holland Agglomeratie Leiden en Bollenstreek
Type d’activité
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Liens
Coût total
€ 175 572,48