Alchemie und Poesie

Since the 1970s, “Alchemy and Poetry” has presented revised and updated versions of previously published studies, as well as original studies and texts. As a compilation, they constitute an “alchemical Parnassus” without parallel in the historiography of literature in the German language. Based on numerous historical records in manuscript form and in print, which have come to more prominent attention since Joachim Telle’s research studies, this work documents for the first time a subset of early-modern points of intersection between natural history and German-language poetry. Its position as a foundational work in the history of literature and science is assured by the over twenty texts, mostly by anonymous poet-alchemists, all of them informative examples of early-modern poetic expression of knowledge about the natural sciences, along with essays that focus on Latin, French, English, and Italian language alchemical poetry (Didier Kahn, Paris) and on the essential features of the history of European didactic poetry (Wilhelm Kühlmann, Heidelberg).