The Code of Chaucer's 'Secree of Secrees': Arabic Alchemical Terminology in 'The Canon's Yeoman's Tale'

Author / Editor
Finkelstein, Dorothee.

Title
The Code of Chaucer's 'Secree of Secrees': Arabic Alchemical Terminology in 'The Canon's Yeoman's Tale'

Published
Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 207 (1970): 260-76.

Description
Identifies the allegorical traditions that underlie the mysteriousness of alchemy in Arabic and Latin writings, focusing on the sources, nomenclature, and descriptions mentioned at the end of CYT (8.1428-65) especially the comments on mercury, sulphur, the difficulties of "multiplication," and the need for secrecy.

Chaucer Subjects
Canon's Yeoman and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations