The Poetics of Alchemical Engagement: The Allegorical Journey to God in Ripley and Norton after Chaucer.

Published: Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Virginia, 2014. Fully accessible via https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/sn009z07c (accessed March 11, 2026)

Description: Argues that "fifteenth-century alchemical poets, George Ripley and Thomas Norton, perceived themselves to be 'Chaucerian' in far deeper ways than has been recognized," joining "author, reader and pilgrim on an essentially hermeneutical journey to Wisdom," and perceiving themselves to share" with Chaucer "the Boethian belief" that perception of the supernatural can be achieved. Includes discussion of Ripley's and Norton's uses of CYPT and reads ClPT for ways Chaucer engages Heraclitus's "river of time," challenges Petrarch's "debunking" of the Middle Ages, and presents Walter and Griselda's marriage as a union of "Time with Eternity, and the human with the divine."

Chaucer Subjects: Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Clerk and His Tale
Canon's Yeoman and His Tale