Intention to Write, Intention to Teach: Vernacular Poetry and Pedagogy in Thomas Norton's Ordinal of Alchemy

Abstract

Connections made by scholars between language and alchemy generally focus on the enigmatic or obscure technical jargon used by alchemists throughout alchemy's extensive history. Only occasionally do critical studies of medieval alchemical texts examine these works for their contribution to the canon of medieval vernacular literature or literary theory. Not surprisingly, scholarly discussions of alchemical writing in Middle English literature focus primarily on Chaucer. As recently as a 1999 article in the Chaucer Review, Mark J. Bruhn in "Art, Anxiety, and Alchemy in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale" discusses alchemy as "a metaphor for Chaucer's poetry." "[W] e should have no difficulty," say_s Bruhn, in "construing the ground of the metaphor between Chaucerian letters and alchemical multiplication" (p. 309). Jane Hilberry in a 1987 article on the technical language of the Canon's Yeoman's Tale argues that alchemy's "primary attraction lies in the language that surrounds the practice." She concludes her article: "While Chaucer in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale confirms alchemy's failure to change base metals into gold, he succeeds in transmuting the language of alchemy into poetry" (p. 442). We do find, then, an effort by medievalists to explore the relationship between language and alchemy in English literature, albeit seemingly limited to an interest in Chaucer's poetry rather than in his specific use of the English language.