Magical Materials In Renaissance Philosophy, Literature, and Art

The aim of this volume is to probe the complexities surrounding the idea of “magic” in the early modern period through the specific lens of materials. This collection draws inspiration from a set of papers presented as a double panel, titled “Magical Materials,” at the Renaissance Society of America’s Virtual Conference in the spring of 2021. The essays address magical materials from an interdisciplinary perspective with topics that draw upon learned and popular forms of philosophy, literature, and art. The authors touch on different geographic and linguistic fields (Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and the nascent European vernacular languages). By addressing specific examples of magical materials, the essays provide a glimpse into how philosophers, artists, playwrights, and everyday individuals in Europe made sense of the terrestrial/celestial, natural/supernatural, and legendary/real worlds of magic. The studies cross a large diachronic space, from the fourteenth century to the first half of the seventeenth century, revealing the numerous faces of magic in this kaleidoscopic era.