Imagining the Unimaginable: The Poetics of Early Modern Astronomy - Couverture souple

Bezzola, Lambert Ladi

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 9042015780 ISBN 13 : 9789042015784

Editeur : Editions Rodopi B.V., 2004

Synopsis

182p blue paperback, excellent condition, as new

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

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 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: Ariostos 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.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Editions Rodopi B.V.
• Date d'édition: 2004
• ISBN 10: 9042015780
• ISBN 13: 9789042015784
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 182