Literature in the Age of Celestial Discovery: From Copernicus to Flamsteed [Hardcover]

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.

Introduction, 'Faln Systemes and Dead Chim?ras'; Judy A. Hayden
1. Heliocentrism, Plurality of Worlds, and Ethics: Anton Francesco Doni and Giordano Bruno; Pietro Daniel Omodeo
2. Early Modern Space Travel and the English Man in the Moon; David Cressy
3. An English Renaissance Astronomy Club? Shakespeare, Observation,and the Cosmos; David H. Levy with Judy A. Hayden
4. To the Moon: Discovering the Comic in the Cosmic on the Early Modern English Stage; Gabrielle Sugar
5. Sailing to the Moon: Francis Bacon, Francis Godwin, and the First Science Fiction; Catherine Gimelli Martin
6. The Royal Society, Collective Vision, and Samuel Butler's 'The Elephant in the Moon'; J. Ereck Jarvis
7. 'Cinthia's Hero': Edward Howard's The Six days Adventure or the New Utopia; Judy A. Hayden
8. 'A new discovery of a new world': the Moon and America in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century European Literature; Brycchan Carey
9. Astronomy, Prophecy, and Imposture in Tyssot de Patot's Voyages et avl“Í