1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910457919403321

Autore

Spiller Elizabeth

Titolo

Science, reading, and Renaissance literature : the art of making knowledge, 1580-1670 / / Elizabeth Spiller [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2004

ISBN

1-107-14830-8

1-280-47785-7

0-511-19527-3

0-511-19593-1

0-511-19386-6

0-511-31428-0

0-511-48401-1

0-511-19460-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xi, 214 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Collana

Cambridge studies in Renaissance literature and culture ; ; 46

Disciplina

820.9/36

Soggetti

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

Science in literature

Literature and science - England - History - 17th century

Literature and science - England - History - 16th century

Books and reading - England - History - 16th century

Books and reading - England - History - 17th century

Renaissance - England

Great Britain Intellectual life 16th century

Great Britain Intellectual life 17th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 184-210) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : making early modern science and literature -- ; 1. Model worlds : Philip Sidney, William Gilbert, and the experiment of worldmaking -- ; 2. From embryology to parthenogenesis : the birth of the writer in Edmund Spenser and William Harvey -- ; 3. Reading through Galileo's telescope : Johannes Kepler's dream for reading knowledge -- ; 4. Books written of the wonders of these glasses :



Thomas Hobbes, Robert Hooke, and Margaret Cavendish's theory of reading -- Afterword : fiction and the Sokal hoax.

Sommario/riassunto

Science, Reading, and Renaissance Literature brings together key works in early modern science and imaginative literature (from the anatomy of William Harvey and the experimentalism of William Gilbert to the fictions of Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser and Margaret Cavendish). The book documents how what have become our two cultures of belief define themselves through a shared aesthetics that understands knowledge as an act of making. Within this framework, literary texts gain substance and intelligibility by being considered as instances of early modern knowledge production. At the same time, early modern science maintains strong affiliations with poetry because it understands art as a basis for producing knowledge. In identifying these interconnections between literature and science, this book contributes to scholarship in literary history, history of reading and the book, science studies and the history of academic disciplines.