Frances Yates - Definition and Overview

Dame Frances Amelia Yates (1899-1981) was a noted British historian. She taught at the Warburg Institute of the University of London for many years and received numerous honours, including the OBE and the DBE.

She wrote extensively on the occult or neoplatonist philosophies of the Renaissance. Her books Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964), The Art of Memory (1966), and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1971), drew attention to the key role played by magic in early modern science and philosophy. This was before scholars such as Keith Thomas brought this topic into the historiographical mainstream. Some of her conclusions have later been challenged by other scholars.

The American novelist John Crowley drew extensively on Yates for the occult motifs in Little, Big (1981).

Works

• The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century (1947)
• The Valois Tapestries (1959)
• John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare's England (1968)
• Theatre of the World (1969)
• Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964)
• The Art of Memory (1966)
• The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972)
• Astraea : The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (1975)
• Shakespeare's Last Plays: A New Approach (1975)
• The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (1979)
• Lull and Bruno (1982) Collected Essays I
• Renaissance and Reform : The Italian Contribution (1983) Collected Essays II
• Ideas and Ideals in the North European Renaissance (1984) Collected Essays III

See also

• Hermeticism
• Neoplatonism