Reverse Transmutations: Béroalde de Vervilles Parody of Paracelsus inLe Moyen de parvenir: An Alchemical Language of Skepticism in the French Baroque*

Abstract

AbstractThis essay analyzes the skeptical ideas of one of the most notorious works of the French Baroque,Le Moyen de parvenir. Its author, Béroalde de Verville, described his anti-novel as "une Satyre universelle," and one of his noteworthy accomplishments was to provide his troubled age with a relatively complete and innovative skeptical language based on both esoteric and exoteric alchemy. Conceiving of his text as a critical athanor, Béroalde conducts numerous experiments in transmutation that would turn Paracelsus' concepts into a kind ofprima materia. Out of this reversion to the primordial emerges a general critique of ideas and social institutions through such alchemical notions as prime and ultimate matter, quintessence, astrosophy, the arcanum, the Archeus, and the Cagastrum.