TY - JOUR
AU - Poller, Jake
AB - 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 Machens work was eclipsed in the 1990s by the tendency of scholars to map degeneration theory onto Machens work. In this article, I unpack key alchemical concepts and demonstrate how they relate to the transmutations of Machens 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.
TI - The Transmutations of Arthur Machen: Alchemy in The Great God Pan and The Three Impostors
JO - Literature and Theology
DO - 10.1093/litthe/frt045
DA - 2015-03-19
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-transmutations-of-arthur-machen-alchemy-in-the-great-god-pan-and-S80XA7H6nB
SP - 18
EP - 32
VL - 29
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -