ABSTRACT
The Greeks called the mandrake the plant of Circe, the sorceress, and in spite of its beneficent qualities it inspired reverence and fear. Preserving the energy of nature as it was in the beginning, the mandrake can heal and ensure the fertility of which it is itself evidence since it is capable of obliterating the barrier that separates the human and plant kingdoms. Needless to say, this unfortunate man is none other than the young seducer. La Fontaine, inspired by Machiavelli, wrote a rather lewd tale in verse on the same theme; in it people again find the property of fecundity attributed to the mandrake. None of the works devoted to the mandrake by French Romantic writers achieves the symbolic depth of Arnim's or Tieck's writing, the myth of the mandrake continues to appear in the work of present-day authors who has studied German literature.
