How to make a ring jump in the manner of a locust

Vanessa’s research explores the medieval understanding and appreciation of magic tricks, particularly sleight-of-hand and chemical tricks, preserved in medieval manuscript recipe collections as a form of domestic play and popular science, meaning a general rather than specialist engagement with science and scientific principles, in the Middle Ages. As both material chemical practices and interpersonal performances, magic tricks are a valuable tool for interrogating how late medieval Europeans negotiated their relationships with the physical world, deceit, and each other. Medieval magic tricks intersect with artisanal craft practices; elite dining culture and cooking practices; theatre and public performance; literature; and alchemy, science, and technology. They offer an avenue for the analysis of play and experimentation across a broad spectrum of medieval society, showing how the display and collection of chemical knowledge was integrated into the popular culture of medieval Europe. Medieval magic tricks had a broad audience that cannot be differentiated by social or occupational setting. Recipes for entertaining chemical tricks were present in universities and monasteries, in the home and on the stage, at the banquet and in the kitchen. The experience of these tricks, and related phenomena such as pranks, required a specific relationship between the performer and audience. Combining the theory of active disbelief pioneered by modern magicians and the presentation of deceit in medieval literary genres, Vanessa argues that this relationship was predicated on a shared understanding of possibility underpinned by a willing consent to be deceived. Finally, Vanessa addresses the practical reality of magic tricks demonstrating that the properties of substances manipulated for magic tricks, such as mercury’s reactivity, were the same as those used by specialist craftsmen and alchemists. Across art technology, alchemy, and magic tricks, the same chemical process could be understood functionally, analytically, and ludically and consumed on a spectrum from practical procedure to intellectual record.