The unknowable in early modern thought : natural philosophy and the poetics of the ineffable / Kevin Killeen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Killeen, Kevin, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--17th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Theology in literature--History--17th century.

Theology in literature.

Religion and science--History--17th century.

Religion and science.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

x, 262 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2023]

Summary:

"Early modern thought was haunted by the unknowable character of the fallen world. The sometimes brilliant and sometimes baffling fusion of theological and scientific ideas in the era, as well as in some of its greatest literature, responds to this sense that humans encountered only an incomplete reality. Ranging from Paradise Lost to thinkers in and around the Royal Society and commentary on the Book of Job, The Unknowable in Early Modern Thought explores how the era of the scientific revolution was in part paralyzed by and in part energized by the paradox it encountered in thinking about the elusive nature of God and the unfathomable nature of the natural world. Looking at writers with scientific, literary and theological interests, from the shoemaker mystic, Jacob Boehme to John Milton, from Robert Boyle to Margaret Cavendish, and from Thomas Browne to the fiery prophet, Anna Trapnel, Kevin Killeen shows how seventeenth-century writings redeployed the rich resources of the ineffable and the apophatic--what cannot be said, except in negative terms--to think about natural philosophy and the enigmas of the natural world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The Jobean apophatic and the symphonic unknowability of the world

The theopoetics of Jacob Boehme

Thomas Browne's poetics of the unspeakable

The bewildering surface from Boyle to Cavendish

Anna Trapnel's aesthetics of incoherence

Miltonic vertigo and a theology of disorientation

Epilogue : ordinary and exquisite bafflement.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Killeen, Kevin. Unknowable in early modern thought.

ISBN:

9781503635395

1503635392

9781503635852

1503635856

OCLC:

1336702881