A letter from Folengo’s pseudonym-personality, Merlin, to the printer Paganini, claiming that he does not want to relinquish his own copy for publication; a response from Paganini telling him that he got a copy of the text from Federico Gonzaga (accompanied by the letter Gonzaga sent to Paganini, 1520); a letter to the reader from Paganini, and a…[Read more]

In 1517 Teofilo Folengo published an epic poem under the name Merlin. Another Folengo pseudonym (or heteronym) wrote a wildly creative account of the dicovery of this text and praise for the author.

This chapter examines the use of vegetal analogy in late Renaissance physiology through the case of the German physician Daniel Sennert (1572–1637). It is centered on Sennert’s explanation of generation, in particular the transmission of life through the vegetative soul within the seed, as developed in his early works on medicine and alchemy, the…[Read more]