Botanical symbolism in the Hypnerotomachia: botanical signifiers of a humanist handling of interior transformation

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on the botanical specimens and their symbolic purpose in the narrative of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499). It examines the questions as to why certain plants are positioned at certain narrative stages, and how the relationship between their aesthetic, medical, literary, and symbolic purpose fits with the narrative. It also examines how this ratiocination of reflecting a developing topography with the interior development of the soul is handled in a wholly humanist–Renaissance manner over earlier treatments of botany in the medieval philosophical dream allegories such as Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun’s Roman de la rose and Brunetto Latini’s Il Tesoretto, or the pre-medieval Prudentius’s Psychomachia. 1