Vulcan’s Gold: Poetic Metallurgy in the English Renaissance

From Philip Sidney’s “golden world” to Michael Drayton’s praise of Chaucer for “delving into the mine” of language which he “could refine and coin for currant” to Anne Bradstreet’s admission that her humble verses are “unrefined ore,” early modern literature is replete with metallurgical emblems of poetry as mining and refinement of gold. Insofar as this aureate language associates poetic production with multiple forms of value (material durability, economic reward, aesthetic beauty), the figure is unproblematic. But the metaphor has an unsettling aspect, for the historical practices of gold production that inform it involve elements and practices antithetical to the idea of poetry (noise, darkness, noxious fumes, destruction). The image of poetic gold is thus contested between Apollo, the god of poetry, and Vulcan, the god of fire and metallurgy. By reading texts by Spenser, Jonson, Milton and others, this essay investigates how Renaissance English poetry uses this imaginative conflict to articulate and interrogate the contours of poetic making.