In Fiction
In A Hat Full of Sky, a Discworld novel for young adults by Terry Pratchett, an exaggerated form of the doctrine of signatures results in many plants being equipped with a text in tiny letters (and bad spelling) explaining what they may be good for, and sometimes including warnings similar to modern labels on drug or food items. The main character, Tiffany Aching, questions the usefulness of the text on a walnut shell: "may contain NUT". While this is a very minor theme in the novel, Pratchett discusses the actual historical belief in his afterword. The phrase "signatures of all things" appears in the beginning of episode 3 in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. The character Stephen Dedalus walking along the beach, thinking to himself "Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot."
Read more about this topic: Doctrine Of Signatures
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader’s mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer’s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.”
—J.G. (James Graham)