Roger Bacon's Polyglot Alphabets

Abstract

Encyclopaedias usually label Roger Bacon as "theologian, philosopher, and scientist." Literary scholars and critics will certainly associate Roger Bacon with Robert Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. The romantic comedy illustrates Bacon's close connections with experimental science and with magic art. Oculists even credit Greene's Franciscan friar with the epoch-making invention of spectacles. As for acoustics and experimental phonetics, the doctor mirabilis in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay tried hard but eventually failed to construct a speaking machine. To his great disappointment, his Brazen Head collapsed while repeating the magic spell "Time is out."

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