Wonder and Science : Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe / Mary Blaine Campbell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Campbell, Mary B., 1954- author.

Series:

ACLS Fellows' publications.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wonder (Philosophy)--History.

Wonder (Philosophy).

Philosophy and science--Europe--History.

Philosophy and science.

Ethnology--Early works to 1800--History and criticism.

Ethnology.

Cosmography--Early works to 1800--History and criticism.

Cosmography.

Imaginary places--Early works to 1800--History and criticism.

Imaginary places.

Europe--Intellectual life--18th century.

Europe.

Europe--Intellectual life--17th century.

Europe--Intellectual life--16th century.

Physical Description:

1 recurso online (383 p.)

Edition:

1st printing Cornell pbks.

Other Title:

Wonder and science

Imagining worlds in early modern Europe

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 2016

Language Note:

English

Summary:

During the early modern period, western Europe was transformed by the proliferation of new worlds-geographic worlds found in the voyages of discovery and conceptual and celestial worlds opened by natural philosophy, or science. The response to incredible overseas encounters and to the profound technological, religious, economic, and intellectual changes occurring in Europe was one of nearly overwhelming wonder, expressed in a rich variety of texts. In the need to manage this wonder, to harness this imaginative overabundance, Mary Baine Campbell finds both the sensational beauty of early scientific works and the beginnings of the divergence of the sciences-particularly geography, astronomy, and anthropology-from the writing of fiction. Campbell's learned and brilliantly perceptive new book analyzes a cross section of texts in which worlds were made and unmade; these texts include cosmographies, colonial reports, works of natural philosophy and natural history, fantastic voyages, exotic fictions, and confessions. Among the authors she discusses are André Thevet, Thomas Hariot, Francis Bacon, Galileo, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn. Campbell's emphasis is on developments in England and France, but she considers works in languages other than English or French which were well known in the polyglot book culture of the time. With over thirty well-chosen illustrations, Wonder and Science enhances our understanding of the culture of early modern Europe, the history of science, and the development of literary forms, including the novel and ethnography.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

I. Introduction

PART I. IMAGINATION AND DISCIPLINE

II. Travel Writing and Ethnographic Pleasure: André Thevet and America, Part I

III. The Nature of Things and the Vexations of Art

PART II: ALTERNATIVE WORLDS

IV. On the Infinite Universe and the Innumerable Worlds

V. A World in the Moon: Celestial Fictions of Francis Godwin and Cyrano de Bergerac

VI. Outside In: Hooke, Cavendish, and the Invisible Worlds

PART III. THE ARTS OF ANTHROPOLOGY

VII. Anthropometamorphosis: Manners, Customs, Fashions, and Monsters

VIII. "My Travels to the other World": Aphra Behn and Surinam

IX. E Pluribus Unum: Lafitau's Moeurs des sauvages amériquains and Enlightenment Ethnology

Coda: The Wild Child

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [325]-352) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed Feb. 24, 2017)

ISBN:

9781501705052

1501705059

9781501705069

1501705067

OCLC:

953661091