Albrecht, Roberta

Dr. Roberta Albrecht is an independent scholar and the author of The Virgin Mary as Alchemical and Lullian Reference in Donne (Susquehanna University Press, 2005). She received her master’s degree from Stetson University and was advanced to doctoral candidacy at New York University.

Using Alchemical Memory Techniques for the Interpretation of Literature

2008 0-7734-5198-6
This study examines the ways in which three seventeenth-century metaphysical poets, Donne, Herbert, and Crashaw, used mnemonic devices from Raymond Lull to express dissenting views of purgatory. Studying three alchemico-Lullian signs - the fiery sword, mercurial tears, and the bloody breast - Dr. Albrecht shows how these poets express purgatory as a place where the process of purification occurs and addressed this idea to both Calvinists and members of the Church of England. This book has thirty black and white photographs.