Literature in the Age of Celestial Discovery: From Copernicus to Flamsteed (Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine)

Advances in astronomy such as the theories of Copernicus and the development of the telescope sparked a strong response within Early Modern literature. The essays in this collection show this discourse went on to develop a political context to discuss topics like New World exploration and even kingship and regicide, well into the 18th century. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction: “Faln Systemes” and “Dead Chimæras”....Pages 1-21 Heliocentrism, Plurality of Worlds and Ethics: Anton Francesco Doni and Giordano Bruno....Pages 23-43 Early Modern Space Travel and the English Man in the Moon....Pages 45-73 An English Renaissance Astronomy Club? Shakespeare, Observation and the Cosmos....Pages 75-90 To the Moon: Discovering the Comic in the Cosmic on the Early Modern English Stage....Pages 91-108 Sailing to the Moon: Francis Bacon, Francis Godwin and the First Science Fiction....Pages 109-132 The Royal Society, Collective Vision and Samuel Butler’s “The Elephant in the Moon”....Pages 133-147 “Cinthia’s Hero”: Edward Howard’s The Six days Adventure, or the New Utopia ....Pages 149-165 “A new discovery of a new world”: The Moon and America in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century European Literature....Pages 167-182 Astronomy, Prophecy and Imposture in Tyssot de Patot’s Voyages et avantures de Jaques Massé ....Pages 183-200 Back Matter....Pages 201-224 The reconfiguration and relinquishing of one's conviction in a world system long held to be finite required for many in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a compromise in one's beliefs and the biblical authority on which he or she had relied - and this did not come without serious and complex challenges. Advances in astronomy, such as the theories of Copernicus, the development of the telescope, and Galileo's discoveries and descriptions of the moon sparked intense debate in Early Modern literary discourse. The essays in this collection demonstrate that this discourse not only stimulated international discussion about lunar voyages and otherworldly habitation, but it also developed a political context in which these new discoveries and theories could correspond metaphorically to New World exploration and colonization, to socio-political unrest, and even to kingship and regicide.