Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
ing.
6
In addition, Otto Krätz has collected some material on the role of
chemists in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, on which I occa-
sionally draw (Krätz 1990, 1991, 2004).
2.
Preliminary Notes about the Medieval Alchemist in the
Literature
The literary figure of the alchemist had already been created in the four-
teenth century by writers such as Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarch,
and Geoffrey Chaucer, and then became one of the favorite figures in
social satires from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries,
e.g
. by
Sebastian Brant, Desiderius Erasmus, Agrippa of Nettesheim, Reginald
Scot, Johannes Claius, Thomas Lodge, Ben Jonson, and many more.
7
Its
roots go back to alchemical texts, to a debate on the true alchemy that
accompanied alchemy throughout its existence. In fact, alchemical fic-
tion and nonfiction were never as clearly separated as we are inclined to
see them from our present point of view.
8
A classic topic in alchemical
treatises was the defamation of those who did not follow what the author
himself considered the true alchemy. Opponents were usually called
stupid and greedy, 'puffers' without reason who blindly strive for gold
instead of insight and spiritual improvement, and who in their greed ruin
themselves and cheat others. Writers such as Petrarch and Chaucer
elaborated on this motif in great detail, and they did so by dividing the
6
The dominant theme of the pharmacist in the literature is, according to Urdang, the
intermediate social position, between being a scientist or a physician and a seller,
which has led to some pseudoscientific characters, for instance 'Homais' in Gustave
Flaubert's
Madame Bovery
(1857).
7
Dante Alighieri,
Divine Comedy
(1310-21), Inferno, Cantato XXIX, l.118-39; Fran-
cesco Petrarch, “De Alchimia”,
De remediis utriusque fortunae
(1353-66), chap. 111;
Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue” and “The Canon's Yeoman's
Tale”, in
Canterbury Tales
(ca. 1390); Sebastian Brant, “Von Fälscherei und Be-
schiss”, in
Das Narrenschyff
(1494), chap. 102; Desiderius Erasmus, “Beggar Talks”
and “Alchemy/Alcumistica”, in
Colloquia
(1524); Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von
Nettesheim, “Alchimia”, in
De incertidudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium
(1530), chap. XC; Reginald Scot,
The Discoverie of Witchcraft
(1584), fourteenth
book; Johannes Claius,
Altkumistica
(1586); Thomas Lodge, “The Anatomie of Al-
chymie”, in
A Fig for Momus
(1595), Epistle 7; Ben Jonson,
The Alchemist
(1610/
12). The best survey of the English literature is Linden 1996; see also Read 1947.
8
For a selection of alchemical poetry, see Schuler 1995.
