Literature

Mary Campbell

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521572446.031

30 - Literature

from Part IV - Cultural Meanings of Natural Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Mary Campbell

Edited by

Katharine Park and

Lorraine Daston

Show author details

Katharine Park: Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Lorraine Daston: Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Science and imaginative literature have made a dynamic pair of objects for study ever since they were sharply and categorically separated as activities of the mind and kinds of representations: To study them in tandem, at least for literary historians and critics, is to confront the embarrassing question, What is “literature”? – a question harder and harder to answer, and not to be answered here. The relations between science and literature (and early printed book production) have seemed especially interesting since about 1980, as scholars in historical fields have come more and more to poach on each other’s lands and goods. During the advent of cultural studies, especially in the work and thought of certain French historians and philosophers interested in science (e.g., Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, and Michel de Certeau), the canons of literary history expanded as the study of “discourse” and “representation” relieved it of an older focus restricted to particular authors and genres.

Marjorie Hope Nicolson, perhaps the greatest student of “science and literature” writing in English in the first half of the twentieth century, is known above all for her work on the opening up of “space” (in its modern sense) to the literary imagination in such books as Newton Demands the Muse (1946), Voyages to the Moon (1948), and the articles collected in Science and Imagination (1956). Nicolson’s primary interest was in canonical English literature and the opportunities provided for it by the materials and potential metaphors of the “new science.” Her contemporary, the British historian Frances Yates, brought a similar sense of the relationship of (pan-European) scientific activity and imaginative literature to her account of Love’s Labours Lost (1598) and its real-life model (according to Yates), London’s late sixteenth-century “School of Night,” to which such Renaissance luminaries as Walter Raleigh (ca. 1554–1618), mathematician, linguist, and colonialist Thomas Harriot (1560–1621), the poet George Chapman (ca. 1559–1634), and the renegade philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) belonged or were visitors.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 756 - 772

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521572446.031 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Percy G., Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Novel (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983).Google Scholar

Adams, Percy G., Travelers and Travel Liars, 1660–1800 [1962] (New York: Dover, 1980).Google Scholar

Alpers, Svetlana, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983)Google Scholar

Alvar, Nuñez Cabeza Vaca, La Relación que dio Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca de lo acaescido en las Indias (Zamora: Augustin de Pazy Juan Picardo, 1542).Google Scholar

Aretino, Pietro, Ragionamento della Nanna, et della Antonia was published in two parts (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1534–6)Google Scholar

Asad, Talal, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (London: Ithaca Press, 1973)Google Scholar

Atkinson, Geoffroy, The Extraordinary Voyage in French Literature before 1700 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1920).Google Scholar

Atkinson, , The Extraordinary Voyage in French Literature from 1700 to 1720 (Paris: É. Champion, 1922).Google Scholar

Babcock Gove, Phillip, The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction … from 1700 to 1800 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941).Google Scholar

Bachelard, Gaston (the precursor), L’Expérience d’espace dans la physique contemporaine (Paris: F. Alcan, 1937) and La psychanalyse du feu (Paris: Gallimard, 1938)Google Scholar

Bacon, Francis, Novum organum (London: B. Norton, 1620).Google Scholar

Baine Campbell, Mary, “The Illustrated Travel Book and the Birth of Ethnography,” in The Work of Dissimilitude, ed. Allen, G. and White, Robert A. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992).Google Scholar

Baine Campbell, Mary, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

Behn, Aphra, Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave: A True History (London: Will Canning, 1688)Google Scholar

Biagioli, Mario, “Rights and Rewards: Changing Frameworks of Scientific Authorship in Early Modern Natural Philosophy,” in Scientific Authorship: Credit and Intellectual Property in Science, ed. Biagioli, Mario and Galison, Peter (London: Routledge, 2002).Google Scholar

Boesky, Amy, “Bacon’s New Atlantis and the Laboratory of Prose,” in The Project of Prose in Early Modem Europe and the New World, ed. Fowler, Elizabeth and Greene, Roland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar

Bordelon, Laurent, L’Histoire des imaginations extravagantes de Monsieur Ouflé (Paris: N. Gosselin and C. Leclerc, 1710, and Amsterdam: Estienne Roger, Pierre Humbert, Pierre de Coup and les Frères Chatelain, 1710).Google Scholar

Bordo, Susan, The Flight to Objectivity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987)Google Scholar

Browne, Thomas, Pseudodoxia epidemica (London: Edward Dodd, 1646).CrossRef Google Scholar

Bry de, Théodor and sons, Grands voyages … (Frankfurt: Theodor de Bry, 1595–1634).Google Scholar

Burton, Robert, Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford: John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1621)CrossRef Google Scholar

Canguilhem, Georges, “The Pathological and the Normal [1943],” trans. Fawcett, Carolyn R. and , Robert Cohen (New York: Zone Books, 1989).Google Scholar

Cartier, Jacques, Brief récit, et succincte narration, de la navigation faicte es ysles de Canada, Hochelage, etc. (Paris: Ponce Roffet, 1545).Google Scholar

Cavendish, Margaret, Description of a New World Called the Blazing-World (London: A. Maxwell, 1666)Google Scholar

Certeau, , “Ethno-Graphy: Speech, or the Space of the Other: Jean de Léry,” in The Writing of History, trans. Conley, tom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988)Google Scholar

Cotton, Charles, Erotopolis, The Present State of Betty-land (London: Thomas Fox, 1684)Google Scholar

Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien, Estats et empires du soleil (Paris: Charles de Sercy, 1662).Google Scholar

Dalgarno, George, Ars signorum, vulgo character universalis et linguaphilosophica (London: J. Hayes, 1661).Google Scholar

Daston, Lorraine and Park, Katharine, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1997).Google Scholar

de Certeau, Michel, “History: Science and Fiction,” in Heterologies, trans. Massumi, Brian (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986)Google Scholar

de Foigny, Gabriel, Terre Australe connue (Vannes [Genève]: Jacques Venevil, 1676).Google Scholar

Dear, Peter, “Totius in Verba: Rhetoric and Authority in the Early Royal Society,” Isis, 76 (1985).Google Scholar

Dobell, Clifford, Antony van Leeuwenhoekand His “Little Animals” (New York Staples Press, 1932)Google Scholar

Donne, John, ConclaueIgnati (London: W. Hall, 1611)Google Scholar

Donne, , Ignatius His Conclave (London: Richard More, 1611).CrossRef Google Scholar

Du Bartas, Guillaume, Semaine [Sepmaine] (Paris: Michel Gadolleau, 1587).Google Scholar

Eamon, William, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Early Modem Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

Edward, Rosen’s translation, , Kepler’s “Somnium: The Dream, or Posthumous Work on Lunar Astronomy” (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967)Google Scholar

Eisenstein, Elizabeth, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar

English, , The Ornithology of Francis Willughby of Middleton … By John Ray (London: John Martyn, 1678).Google Scholar

Fausett, David, Writing the New World: Imaginary Voyages and Utopias of the Great Southern Land (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

Febvre, Lucien and Martin, Henri-Jean, L’apparition du lime (Paris: A. Michel, 1958)Google Scholar

Formigari, Lia, Linguisticaed empirismo nel Seicento inglese (Bari: Laterza, 1970), English trans., Language and Experience inSeventeenth-Century British Philosophy, trans. Dodd, William (Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, Series 3, Volume 48) (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1988).Google Scholar

Foucault, Michel, Les mots et les chases [1966], English trans., The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1970)Google Scholar

Fox, EvelynKeller’s essays “Baconian Science” and “Spirit and Reason at the Birth of Modern Science,” in , Keller, Reflections, pt. 1; and Greenblatt, Stephen, “Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Skteenth Century,” in FirstImages of America, ed. Chiappelli, Fredi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).Google Scholar

Fox Keller, Evelyn, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar

Fracastoro, Girolamo, Syphilis, she morbus gallicus(Verona: [S. De Nicolini da Sabbio], 1530)Google Scholar

France, , The Palace of Secrets: EerouU de Vervile and Renaissance Conceptions of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).Google Scholar

François, Rabelais, Quart livre (Lyon, 1548 [partial]; Paris: Michel Fezandat, 1552).Google Scholar

Galilei, Galileo, Sidereus nuncius (Venice: T, Baglionum, 1610)CrossRef Google Scholar

Gerard, David English trans., The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450–1800, trans. (London: Verso, 1984)Google Scholar

Godwin, Francis, The Man in the Moon (London: John Norton, 1638)Google Scholar

Grossman, Allen, “The Passion of Laocoön: Warfare of the Religious against the Poetic Institution,” Western Humanities Review, 56 (2002).Google Scholar

Hackluyt, Richard, Principall Navigations … of the English Nation (London: Printed by George Bishop and Ralph Newbury, for Christopher Barker, 1589).Google Scholar

Hallyn, Fernand, Structure poetique du monde [1987], English trans., The Poetic Structure of the World: Copernicus and Kepler, trans. Leslie, Donald M. (New York: Zone Books, 1993).Google Scholar

Hans, Staden of Hesse, Warhaftige Historie und Beschreibung eyner Landschafft der … Menschfresser Leuten (Marburg: Andres Kolben, 1557).Google Scholar

Harriot, Thomas, A Briefeand True Report of the New Founde Land of Virginia (London: R. Robinson, 1588; Frankfurt: Theodor de Bry and Sons, 1590).Google Scholar

Harriot, , A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (London, 1588).Google Scholar

Harriot, , America Part I, Frankfurt: Théodor de Bry, 1590).Google Scholar

Harvey, William, De motucordis (Frankfurt: William Fitzer, 1628).Google Scholar

Hooke, Robert, Micrographia; or, Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies (London: J. Martyn and J. Allestry, 1665)Google Scholar

Hope Nicolson, Marjorie, Newton Demands the Muse (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1946)Google Scholar

James, Knowlson’sUniversal Language Schemes in EnglandandFrance, 1600–1800 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975)Google Scholar

Jean, Léry, Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil (La Rochelle: Ant. Chuppin, 1578).Google Scholar

John, Lear’s long introduction to the translation of Patricia Kirkwood, Frueh, Kepler’s “Dream “ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965).Google Scholar

Johns, Adrian, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)CrossRef Google Scholar

Jowitt, Claire and Watt, Diane, eds., The Arts of Seventeenth-Century Science: Representations of the Natural World in European and North American Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).Google Scholar

Kepler, Johannes, Somnium, sive Astronomia Lunae (Sagan and Frankfurt: Ludwig Kepler, 1634).Google Scholar

Lafitau, Joseph, Moeurs des sauvages ameriquaines, 2 vols. (Paris: Saugrain laîné, for Charles Étienne Hochereau, 1724).Google Scholar

Larivaille, Paul, Pietro Aretino (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1997)Google Scholar

Lefèvre, la Boderie, Galliade; ou, de la revolution des arts et sciences (Paris: Guillaume Chaudiée, 1578).Google Scholar

Lestringant, Frank, L’Atelier du cosmographe ou L’Image du monde à Id Renaissance (Paris: A, Michel, 1991), English trans., Mapping the Renaissance World, trans. Fausett, David (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).Google Scholar

Linnaeus, Carolus, Systema naturae (Leiden: Printed by J. W. de Groot for Theodor Haak, 1735).Google Scholar

Linnaeus, , Critica Botanica (Leiden: Conrad Wishoff, 1737).Google Scholar

Longino, Helen, “Subjects, Power, and Knowledge: Description and Prescription in Feminist Philosophies of Science,” in Feminism and Science, ed. Longino, Helen and Keller, Evelyn Fox (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar

Louis, Hennepin’s “fictitious” account of finding the source of the Mississippi River appeared in his popular and much believed Nouvelle découverte d’un tres grand pays (Utrecht: Guillaume Broedelet, 1697).Google Scholar

Louis, Hennepin’sDescription de l’ile Formosa en Asie (Amsterdam: Estienne Roger, 1705).Google Scholar

Louis, Hennepin’sHistorical and Geographical Description of Formosa (London: Printed for Daniel Brown, G. Strahan and W. Davis, Fran. Coggan and Bernard Lintott, 1704).Google Scholar

Louise Pratt, Mary, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992).Google Scholar

Manuel, Frank E. and Manuel, Fritzie P., Utopian Thought in the Western World (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1979).Google Scholar

Marlowe, Christopher, The Tragedie of Dr. Faustus (London: Printed by V. Simmes for Thomas Bushell, 1604).Google Scholar

Mary, B[aine] Campbell, “The West” Margaret Hodgson’s comprehensive survey, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964).Google Scholar

Mary, B[aine] Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980)Google Scholar

Midgeley, Mary, Science and Poetry (London: Routledge, 2001).Google Scholar

Milton, John, Paradise Lost (London: Peter Parker, and Robert Boulter and Matthias Walker, 1667).Google Scholar

Nash, Thomas, The Unfortunate Traveller (London: Cuthbert Burby, 1594)Google Scholar

Neville, Henry, The Isle of Pines (London: Printed by S. G. for Allen Banks and Charles Harper, 1668).Google Scholar

Nicolson, , Science and Imagination (Ithaca, N.Y.: Great Seal Press, 1956).Google Scholar

Nicolson, , Voyages to the Moon (New York: Macmillan, 1948)Google Scholar

Pietro, Martire d’Anghiera, De rebus oceanicis et orbe novo decades tres (Basel: Johannes Bebelius, 1533).Google Scholar

Pratt, , Eyes, Imperial; and Jacobs, Margaret C., “The Materialist World of Pornography,” in The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800, ed. Hunt, Lynn (New York: Zone Books, 1993).Google Scholar

Purchas, Samuel, Purchas: His Pilgrimes (London: Printed by William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, 1625).Google Scholar

Raleigh, Walter, Discoverie of The Large Rich and Bewtiful Empire of Guiana… (London: Robert Robinson, 1596).Google Scholar

Reiss, Timothy, The Discourse of Modernism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982)Google Scholar

René, Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia (Paris: Michael Soly, 1641).Google Scholar

Savinien, Cyrano Ber-gerac, Histoires continues de les estats et empires de la lune (Paris: Le Bret, 1657)Google Scholar

Schiebinger, Londa, The Mind Has No Sex? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989)Google Scholar

Schiebinger, , “Feminine Icons: The Face of Early Modern Science,” Critical Inquiry, 14 (1988)CrossRef Google Scholar

Serres, Michel, Hermes, I–V (Paris: Editions Minuit, 1968–80)Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William, Love’s Labours Lost (London: Cuthbert Burby, 1598).Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William, The Tempest (London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623).Google Scholar

Sir Phillip, Sidney, Astrophel and Stella (London: Printed [by John Charlewood] for Thomas Newman, 1591).Google Scholar

Sprat, Thomas, The History of the Royal Society (London: Printed by T. R. for]. Martyn, 1667).Google Scholar

Swift, Jonathan, Travels into Several Remote Nations… of Lemuel Gulliver (London: Benjamin Motte, 1726).Google Scholar

van Helden, Albert, “The Reception of Sidereus Nuncius,” in his translation Sidereus Nuncius; or, The Sidereal Messenger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).Google Scholar

Vickers, Ilse, Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar

Warren, George, An Impartial Description of Surinam … with a History of Several Strange Beasts, Birds, Fishes, Serpents, Insects and Customs of that Colony… from Experience… (London: Nathaniel Brooke, 1667).Google Scholar

Wheeler, Valerie, “Travelers’ Tales: Observations on the Travel Book and Ethnography,” Anthropological Quarterly, 59 (April 1986).CrossRef Google Scholar

Willughby, Frances and Ray, John, Ornithologiae libri tres (London: John Martyn, 1676).Google Scholar

Yates, Frances, A Study of “Love’s Labors Lost” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936).Google Scholar

Book contents

30 - Literature

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive