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The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Routledge Classics) (Paperback)

by Frances Yates (Author) "In the illustration shown in Plate 1, four men are seen sitting under a neat row of trees, neatly labelled..." (more)
Key Phrases: inspired melancholy, supercelestial world, occults philosophia, Christian Cabala, Christian Cabalist, John Dee (more...)
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Editorial Reviews

Review
A welcome new edition of this classic work ... – Network

Among those who have explored the intellectual world of the sixteenth century, no one can rival Frances Yates. Wherever she looks, she illuminates . . . No one has done more than she to recreate, from unexpected material, the intellectual life of past ages. – Hugh Trevor-Roper

Among those who have explored the intellectual world of the sixteenth century, no one can rival Frances Yates. Wherever she looks, she illuminates . . . No one has done more that she to recreate, from unexpected material, the intellectual life of past ages.
–Hugh Trevor-Roper

Product Description
It is hard to overestimate the importance of the contribution made by Dame Frances Yates to the serious study of esotericism and the occult sciences. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age was her last book, and in it she condensed many aspects of her wide learning to present a clear, penetrating, and, above all, accessible survey of the occult movements of the Renaissance, highlighting the work of John Dee, Giordano Bruno, and other key esoteric figures.

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 264 pages
  • Publisher: Routledge; 1st edition (September 1, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0415254094
  • ISBN-13: 978-0415254090
  • Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #287,609 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
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In the illustration shown in Plate 1, four men are seen sitting under a neat row of trees, neatly labelled. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
inspired melancholy, supercelestial world, occults philosophia, inspired melancholic, continental mission, arte cabalistica, mathematical preface, occult philosophy, elemental theory, occulta philosophia, verbo mirifico, harmonia mundi, imperial reform, mathematical magic, angelic hierarchies, witch craze, elemental world, imperial theme, angelic hierarchy, obscure men, universal harmony
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Christian Cabala, Christian Cabalist, John Dee, Francesco Giorgi, The Faerie Queene, Queen Elizabeth, Friar of Venice, Elizabethan England, Renaissance Neoplatonism, Cornelius Agrippa, Doctor Faustus, Cabalist Conclusions, Hermes Trismegistus, Ramon Lull, Elizabethan Renaissance, New Atlantis, Prince Henry, Robert Fludd, Christopher Marlowe, Giordano Bruno, Lullian Art, Sabbatai Sevi, The Tempest, Earl of Leicester, German Rosicrucian
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47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not Yates at her best, November 25, 2001
Dame Frances Yates had an incredible impact on the study of early modern magic and occultism. Although she wrote on other subjects, her primary legacy is in this field, particularly her books _Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition_ and _The Art of Memory_. For anyone interested in the occult Renaissance, these books are both absolutely required reading.

As a scholar, Yates had some bad habits, and these are most obvious in _The Rosicrucian Enlightenment_ and, to a lesser extent, _The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age_. In these books, we see her habit of beginning with a "What if?" proposition, then repeating it in stronger and stronger formulations until it has become an accepted fact.

_The Occult Philosophy_ has this problem to some degree, but the primary problem is that Yates tries to deal with a subject on which she is not qualified to pronounce: Kabbalah. As she asmits, she is not a Hebraist, and her only access to Kabbalah comes from reading some of Gershom Scholem's work. Of course, she cannot be faulted for writing on the subject before Kabbalah became a large and accepted field of study within Jewish Studies, but Yates here displays her usual tendency to overstate her case.

A related problem is that she can be rather offhanded in her treatment of figures peripheral to her obsessions (i.e. anyone not John Dee or Giordano Bruno), and this can lead her to distort matters by repeating others' second-hand analyses.

Having said all this, bear in mind that it's Frances Yates we're talking about here. Stacked up against her best books, _The Occult Philosophy_ looks pretty sad; stacked up against almost anything else in the field, it's drop-dead brilliant: it's very well written, charming, stimulating, and extremely accessible. If you like Yates, read this book now, just take it with a little grain or so of salt; if you haven't experienced Yates yet, DON'T buy this --- read _Giordano Bruno_ NOW!

Yates had her faults, certainly, but she almost singlehandedly invented a field of study. This is an important part of the Yates corpus, but by no means its core.

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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Important synthesis of Renaissance history, May 25, 2002
By Milos Tomin (Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
As the title states this book sets out to find the philosophical roots of Elizabethan culture of the late XVI and early XVII century. The question posited by Dame Frances Yates is : What was the underlying Philosophy of the Elizabethan age and she points unmistakably to the occult philosophy i.e. Hermeticism tempered by Christian Neoplatonism and Qabbalah. Origins of the Elizabethan culture are traced straight to the Medici court, Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Yates being no believer of the operative work of magic, still provides enough food for thought for the student of Renaissance humanism, history of ideas or budding hermeticist. Although this book grew out from a series of lectures on "Inspired Melancholy" it still manages to tie in such diverse subjects as historical background of Ben Johnson's The Alchemist and Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (Henry Cornelius Agrippa seen as the inspiration for the character), philosophico/magical/religious meaning of Elizabethan poetry (Spencer, Raleigh), the dramas of Shakespear (specially the Tempest and King Lear) and content of Durer's famous print Melencolia. The strengths of Frances Yates writing is precisely the ability to show the unifying idea behind these seemingly diverse works of art and philosophy. An important part of this book is connected to the destiny of the exiled Spanish Sephardim jews who spread the medical writings of Avicenna and rich literature of Iberian Qabbalism.

Yates history provides an alternative view of English history at the time of Tudor and Stewart dynasties most importantly in their relation to Ecclesiastical powers and politics of continental Europe.

This is a wonderful book that will stimulate a fundamental rethinking of the view of European Political and intellectual history.

Writer of this review is the translator of the book into Serbian .

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and Insightful Work on the Esoteric Tradition, April 10, 2005
Frances Yates was a scholar of world renown most famous for her text, The Art of Memory, and the biographical study, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. In this work, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, what has been known as `occult philosophy' in the Renaissance, revived by Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, she explores the "Christianized" version of the Jewish Cabala, and its manifestation and influential affects on religious and philosophical ideas, including the arts, during the Elizabethan Age.

Yates begins with her proposed theses that, in past analyses of occult philosophy, it has focused primarily on the Hermetic tradition. She claims that this occult tradition should be called the "Hermetic-Cabalist", as the ideas are not solely Hermetic in nature, but have a strong Jewish Cabalistic influence, albeit in a Christianized form, as formulated by Marsilio Ficino.

This text is a rich analysis on the history of ideas. Yates adeptly sketches the influences of the hermetic-cabala in the Renaissance, moving forward to one of the more influential texts that affected this tradition more than any other treatise, Henry Cornelius Agrippa's, Three Books of Occult Philosophy. She also focuses her study on three other influential personages, the Cabalist Friar, Francesco Giorgi, and his work, "De harmonia mundi", and the works of Johannes Reuchlin. Yates also looks at the mysterious Elizabethan magus, Dr. John Dee, known as the "Queen's Conjurer" citing the doctor's primary sources of his own work directly to Agrippa. Her claim is that John Dee, was in fact, along with Agrippa, Giorgi and Reuchlin, Christian Cabalists.

The theme of this work is that there was a philosophy of the occult from the Italian Renaissance that operated and was renewed in the Elizabethan Renaissance. To back this thesis, she cites examples from great works of Elizabethan literature that have strikingly blatant examples of this occult philosophy, such as Spenser's The Faerie Queene; Christopher Marlowe's famous play, Doctor Faustus; and Shakespeare's A Mid Summer Night's Dream, Hamlet, King Lear and, of course, The Tempest. What these works of literature have in common are expressed tenets of the Christian Cabalist occult tradition, alluding to the works and lives of Agrippa and John Dee. Yates' arguments are compelling and deserve, as she herself notes, further study by scholars.

This was Yates' last work. She has become one of the most read and respected scholars on the history of the esoteric tradition. This work brings to light an intellectual movement that has been suppressed or dismissed by "serious' scholars as superstitious or irrelevant at best. It is because of her research that these once suppressed intellectual movements have regained legitimacy in the history of ideas and their relevance to the development of Western thought.

The text's style is not only written for the scholar or academic, but fortunately can also be read by the laymen interested in the history of the Western occult tradition.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Historically rich
Frances Yates is an indispensable auther, her work regarding the occult science and its development through the Renaissance to it influence today is a needed view from a clear and... Read more
Published 10 months ago by C. Deal

3.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable Insights; Insanity Abounds
Although she probably did not intend the work to serve such a purpose, Dame Frances Yates' book is certainly key to understanding the history of sixteenth and early seventeenth... Read more
Published on December 1, 2005 by Michael Tozer

4.0 out of 5 stars Tip of the iceberg
Frances Yates was first recommended to me more than a decade ago and I'm sorry that I waited so long to read her. Read more
Published on June 22, 2003 by Anne

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