Libertine Botany and Vegetal Modernity

Abstract

The first western plant fiction appears with the waning of the Renaissance (and may be considered one of the earliest forms of science fiction more generally). While the Aristotelian endorsement of vegetal ensoulment gradually falls out of favor as a natural philosophical approach to plants, this chapter shows that the autonomous liveliness of the plant inherent in the Aristotelian notion of vegetative psūkē is reawakened from its scholastic slumber by two authors: Guy de La Brosse (1586–1641) and Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655), both belonging to a circle of libertins érudits. The authors investigate how the botanically oriented texts of La Brosse and Cyrano generate an eclectic combination of proto-scientific ideas, borrowed from traditions spanning atomism to alchemy, to significantly increase the animatedness of the plant. “Freed” from the confines of metaphysics by scientific thought, the plant penetrates into the domain of literature. The plant is thus not only present but takes pride of place at one of the points of origin of science fiction.