Love's Alchemist

Abstract

Sir Kenelm Digby was arguably one of seventeenth-century England's most interesting figures. An accomplished scientist and friend of Europe's leading intellectuals (Boyle, Descartes, and Hobbes among them), Digby's genius touched not only on natural science but he also made his mark as a courtier and diplomat, literary critic, swashbuckler, and Roman Catholic apologist. In this essay, I argue that Digby was not quite aware of what game language was playing with him in his experiments and research related to palingenesis. Indeed, in this scientific endeavor Digby was at the mercy of what I call “unconscious metalepsis,” a figure of speech that controlled Digby much more than he controlled it.

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