Perpetual Motion: Alchemy and the Technology of the Self

Abstract

A s with so much else of value in Chaucer criticism, Chaucer and the French Tradition established the critical terms in which the Canon Yeoman’s Prologue and Tale have been discussed. 1 There Prof. Muscatine dismissed as unproductive the debate about Chaucer’s biographical relation to alchemy, arguing instead that the tale was a prophetic warning directed against “the blind materialism” that leads to a “complacent faith in science that despises God.” “In the light of later history,” he concluded, “the poem is reactionary.” 2

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