"Hamlet's Alchemy: Transubstantiation, Modernity, Belief"
https://www.worldshakesbib.org/entry/bbbc230/
Author:
	Eggert, Katherine.
Type:
	Journal Article
Year:
	2013
Publication Information:
	Shakespeare Quarterly 64, no.  1 (2013): 45–57.
Annotation:
	After tracing the "history of disputes over the physics of transubstantiation in order to dispute the historicity of skepticism that is typically applied to the treatment of the Eucharist in Hamlet," considers how "Hamlet's pondering of the nature of physical change also touches on alchemy, whose own theories of material change are inextricable from medieval and early modern theories of Eucharistic transformation." Concludes that "when Hamlet brackets the fate of human flesh with alchemy and transubstantiation, it exposes Hamlet's hopeless nostalgia for a medieval, preskeptical, Eucharistic-style unity of body and spirit as false nostalgia." Reply by Theodore Leinwand, 58-59.
Language:
	English
Persons:
	Leinwand, Theodore
Keywords:
	physics; transubstantiation; skepticism; Eucharist; alchemy; nostalgia;
Tags:
	Hamlet, Scholarship, Criticism, History of Criticism
WSB Update:
	Summer 2013
WSB Record Number:
	bbbc230