ABSTRACT
Poets of the court of Henri III of France were surrounded by alchemists, and often practiced alchemy themselves. They then adopted the images of alchemy, the evocative and obscure metaphors of the Art, to their more worldly verses. These verses seem primarily concerned with the mutable sexuality of the alchemical process, and with the sacrificial nature of the hermaphrodite. Such interests are reflected in both of the poetic traditions that dominate the Court: the Petrarchan lyric, in which gender roles are frequently reversed and in which the poet sacrifices himself or is brutally sacrificed for his love; and political poetry, in which the unstable nature of power and the violent clashes of the Wars of Religion are depicted. Needless to say, these two traditions often overlapped, and were supplemented by many others, such as the Neoplatonic tradition, in which the image of the hermaphrodite links sexuality with power.
