Romanticizations, or Cauda Pavonis
Romanticizations, or Cauda Pavonis
This chapter begins with examples of alchemical imagery in the poetry of Milton and John Donne as well as religious poets in England, Germany, and the American colonies that provided a transition from the earlier satirizations of the alchemist to the new romanticizations of the figure. Several English works take the figure of the alchemist to provide moralizing examples for the dire social consequences stemming from the pursuit of gold. As a youth Goethe actually practiced alchemy in its medical form of iatrochemy; but by the time he wrote his Faust he had become disenchanted with the Art, presenting it as a corrupting force. His younger contemporary E. T. A. Hoffmann, while similarly criticizing the alchemist for his presumption in tampering with human life in his story “The Sandman,” presented alchemy in “The Golden Pot” as a metaphor for the higher poetic reality toward which his protagonist Anselmus aspires.
Keywords: cauda pavonis, romanticization, William Godwin, Goethe, Hoffmann, religious metaphors, John Donne, John Milton
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