There is no plant that embodies the encounter between humans and plants better than the mandrake, whose myth, as Arlette Bouloumié writes, ‘has the cosmic sense of a profound correlation between nature and humanity and the possibility of their merging’. Zarcone presents a collection of extracts on this theme, under three main headings: (1) ancient documents in which legend and scholarship are mixed in varying degrees; (2) contemporary scholarly studies; and (3) literary texts.
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References
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