로버트 그린의 『베이컨 수사와 번게이 수사』에 재현된 호문쿨루스적 욕망

초록

This paper explores friar Bacon’s desire to create a homunculus represented in Robert Green’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. In the play, friar Bacon creates a talking brazen head that is analogous to a homunculus. The Homunculus first appears in De natura rerum written by Paracelsus, a physician and alchemist in the Renaissance period. Paracelsus mentions that a homunculus is “the greatest secrets which God has revealed to mortal and fallible man” and “looks like a human but much smaller than human.” A homunculus reflects the human desire to imitate God’s ability to create. In that sense, friar Bacon’s desire to create a brazen head can be regarded as the desire to create a homunculus. Paracelsus states that a homunculus can interact with human beings, yet Bacon’s attempt to communicate with the brazen head results in failure as the brazen head is destroyed after speaking only a few words. Nevertheless, friar Bacon’s desire and attempt to creat life have significant implications in the present day, reflected in modern scientific fields such as human cloning and life extension. Therefore, Yuval Noah Harari’s comment that the big project of human beings is to acquire “divine powers of creation and destruction” and “upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus” seems highly meaningful in this context, providing a new interpretation of Green’s play.

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