Imagining the Unimaginable: The Poetics of Early Modern AstronomyHow is it possible to imagine what is unknown and therefore unimaginable? How can the unimaginable be represented? On what materials do such representations rely? These questions lie at the heart of this book. Copernican theory redefined the role and importance of the imagination even as it implied the moment of its crisis. Based on this claim, Ladina Bezzola Lambert analyzes seventeenth-century astronomical texts - particularly descriptions of the moon and treatises written in support of the theory of the plurality of worlds - to show how early modern astronomers questioned the role of the imagination as a tool to visualize the unknown, but also how, pressed by the need to support their theories with convincing descriptions of other potential worlds, they sought to overcome the limitations of the imagination with a sophisticated rhetoric and techniques more commonly associated with poetic writing. The limitations of the imagination are at once a problem that all of the texts discussed struggle with and their recurrent theme. In the first and last chapter, the focus shifts to a more explicitly literary context: Ariosto's Orlando furioso and the work of Italo Calvino. The change of focus from science to literature and from the narratives of the past to contemporary ones serves to emphasize that the issues relating to the imagination, its limitations and creative means, are basically the same both in science and literature and that they are still relevant today. |
Contents
Astolfos Lunar Journey in the Orlando furioso | 23 |
Keplers Somnium | 66 |
Cyrano de Bergeracs Lune and Soleil | 106 |
Bibliography | 173 |
Common terms and phrases
allegory analogy appearances argues argument Ariosto Ariosto's Aristotelian Astolfo Bohemia Calvino celestial Città commentary concept context Conversations Copernican theory cosmology cosmos crater creation creative Cronus Cyrano's Daemon Descartes describe discourse dream narrative Duracotus Dyrcona Earth Edited emphasizes Entretiens episode experience explains fiction Fontenelle furioso Galileo Galileo Galilei Hallyn human Huygens Hven Ibid imagery images imagination implied inhabitants interpretation Italo Calvino journey Kepler Kepler's Somnium Kublai language literal literary Luna lunar astronomy lunar surface lunar world Lune Marco meaning memory metaphor mind mondes Moon Moreover myth narrator nature observations offers original Orlando Orlando furioso passage perspective phenomena philosophers planets plurality of worlds Plutarch poetic potential principle Privolvan readers reference relation represent representation rhetoric Rosen Science scientific Sidereus nuncius solar Soleil Somnium stars story structure tarocchi telescope terrestrial things Timothy Reiss tion translation turn University Press visual Volva