Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe

Mary B. Campbell

Cornell University Press, 2004 - History - 366 pages

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

• Introduction: 1
• PARTI IMAGINATION AND DISCIPLINE: 16
• Marguerite de Roberval castaway from André Thevets: 22
• Pleasure: 25
• Anecdote: 44
• Pietro Coppos woodblock map of the New World: 58
• The Nature of Things and the Vexations of: 69
• of Oxfordshire: 108
• ALTERNATIVE WORLDS: 111
• Godwin and Cyrano de Bergerac: 151
• Godwins Man in the Moon: 157
• Cyrano de Bergeracs Other World: 171
• Hooke Cavendish and the Invisible Worlds: 181
• Hookes Micrographia: 193
• Micrographia: 199
• THE ARTS OF ANTHROPOLOGY: 221
• Matron virgo femina from JeanJacques Boissards: 229
• Anthropometamorphosis: 233
• Crosscultural cosmetics from John Bulwers: 237
• Categories and Misfits or What Is That: 250
• Exposed Excised Experienced: 272
• Fiction Science and Agency: 278
• Lafitaus Moeurs des sauvages: 285
• La Religion influoit en tout: 293
• Torture: 299
• Psalmanazar Formosa and the Other Self: 310
• The Wild Child: 319
• Works Cited: 325
• Index: 353

About the author

Mary Baine Campbell is Professor of English at Brandeis University. She is the author of The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400-1600, also from Cornell, in addition to two books of poetry.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe; ACLS Fellows' publications; ACLS Humanities E-Book; Cornell paperbacks
• Author: Mary B. Campbell
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised
• Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2004
• ISBN: 0801489180, 9780801489181
• Length: 366 pages
• Subjects: History / Europe / General; Literary Criticism / European / General; Science / History