The sky in early modern English literature : a study of allusions to celestial events in Elizabethan and Jacobean writing, 1572-1620. / David H. Levy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Levy, David H., 1948-

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

Sky--In literature.

Sky.

Physical Description:

xxix, 111 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Springer., 2011.

Summary:

When a dissertation gets completed, the normal rule is that it is never read. By anyone. David H. Levy's dissertation -- The Sky in Early Modern English Literature: A Study of Allusions to Celestial Events in Elizabethan and Jacobean Writing -- is different. It opens a whole new interdisciplinary field, which involves the beautiful relationship between the night sky and the works of the early modern period of English literature. Although the sky enters into much of literature through the ages, the period involving William Shakespeare and his colleagues is particularly rich. When Shakespeare was about 8 years old, his father probably took him outside his Stratford home into their northward-facing back yard. There, father and son gazed upon the first great new star visible in the past 500 years, shining forth as brightly as Venus, and even visible in daylight. This new star, which we now know as a supernova, completely unhinged old ideas about the cosmos. Combined with a parade of bright comets, a second bright new star in 1604, and a series of eclipses, people began to look at the sky more seriously. In this book, Levy explores how the sky of that period was reflected in its literature. Levy's ultimate goal in this book is to inspire his readers to do the same thing as their ancestors did-so long ago -- look at the sky and appreciate how those long-gone authors read the sky. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Stella Novae of 1572 and 1604 1

1.1 Literature Preceding the Time of the Star 3

1.2 Literature After the Supernova's Appearance 3

1.3 Indirect References to the Star 6

1.4 The Star and the Harvey-Nashe Controversy 8

2 Comets and Meteors: A Rich Harvest from 1573 to 1607 13

2.1 Comets and Meteors in Shakespeare 16

2.2 Meteors 17

2.3 Comets and Meteors of Our Time and Theirs 20

2.4 Comets and Thomas Nashe 21

2.5 Comets After 1602 24

3 These Late Eclipses 27

3.1 Other Contemporary References to the Eclipses of 1605 32

3.2 Other Eclipses 33

3.3 A Treasure of Eclipses in Holinshed's Chronicles 37

3.4 Shakespeare, Nashe, and the Eclipses of 1591 39

4 Of Signs and Seasons 45

4.1 Turning Observation into Theory 48

4.2 Astrology and the Digges Family 50

4.3 The Great Conjunction of 1583 54

5 The Telescope in Early Modern English Literature 59

5.1 New Atlantis 61

5.2 Perspective Glass: A Forerunner to the Telescope 62

5.3 The Telescope in 1610 68

5.4 Shakespeare and the Telescope 70.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781441978134

1441978135

OCLC:

690089401