Dear Listmembers:
Editions Rodopi announces the following new title on comparative literatu=
re:
imagining the unimaginable. The Poetics of Early Modern Astronomy
Ladina Bezzola Lambert:
Amsterdam/New York, NY 2002. IX,182 pp.
(Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden
Literaturwissenschaft 58)
ISBN: 90-420-1578-0 EUR 37,-/US-$ 34.50
How 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 ev=
en
as it implied the moment of its crisis. Based on this claim, Ladina Bezzo=
la
Lambert analyzes seventeenth-century astronomical texts =96 particularly
descriptions of the moon and treatises written in support of the theory o=
f
the plurality of worlds =96 to show how early modern astronomers question=
ed
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 techniqu=
es
more commonly associated with poetic writing. The limitations of the
imagination are at once a problem that all of the texts discussed struggl=
e
with and their recurrent theme.
In the first and last chapter, the focus shifts to a more explicitly
literary context: Ariosto=92s Orlando furioso and the work of Italo Calvi=
no.
The change of focus from science to literature and from the narratives of
the past to contemporary ones serves to emphasize that the issues relatin=
g
to the imagination, its limitations and creative means, are basically the
same both in science and literature and that they are still relevant toda=
y.
Table of Contents:
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 How Metaphors Matter: Astolfo=92s Lunar Journey in the Orlando furioso
2 Images Proposed in Jest: Galileo=92s Sidereus nuncius and the Dialogue
3 The Stuff that Dreams are Made of: Kepler=92s Somnium
4 Worlds of Words: Cyrano de Bergerac=92s Lune and Soleil
5 Metaphors as Systems of Thought: Fontenelle, Cyrano, Wilkins and Huygen=
s
6 Representing the Unimaginability of the Imaginable: Italo Calvino=92s
Castello dei destini incrociati and Le citt=E0 invisibili
Bibliography
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