RT Article
T1 Beyond the Literary Sources of Augurello’s Chrysopoeia
JF Renaissance and reformation
VO 45
IS 3
SP 81
OP 102
A1 Soranzo, Matteo
LA English
PB Iter Press
YR 2022
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1841626082
AB In his Neo-Latin poem Chrysopoeia (1515), the Italian humanist Giovanni Aurelio Augurello often declares to be outdoing the ancients in writing the first alchemical poem in Latin. Is this simply an instance of what E. R. Curtius called outdoing a topos? Or is Augurello’s poem actually venturing onto a metaphorically untrodden path? Based on an analysis of Chrysopoeia, its genesis, and its sources, this article aims to assess the extent of this poem’s novelty. In particular, my interpretation focuses on this text’s poetic transpositions of non-literary sources, and more specifically Geber’s Summa perfectionis and other medieval alchemical texts.
K1 Alchemy
K1 G. A. Augurello
K1 Intertextuality
K1 Neo-Latin Poetry
K1 Renaissance Humanism
DO 10.33137/rr.v45i3.40409