1996 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Of Poetic Imagination of Astronomy and Literature in the Renaissance England
| Project/Area Number |
07610455
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
英語・英米文学
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| Research Institution | Saitama University |
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Principal Investigator |
NAKANO Haruo Saitama University, the faculty of Liberal Arts.Associate Professor, 教養学部, 助教授 (30198163)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1995 – 1996
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| Keywords | Renaissance Astronomy / English Renaissance Literature / Copernicus / Ptolemy / Astronomical Imagination |
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| Research Abstract |
This project is to point out unique aspects of the 'heavenly spheres' which Elizabethan dramatists depicted, and make clear their political ideas reflected in them.
Astronomy, as is widely observed, reached a critical phase in the sixteenth century Europe. After 1550's, Astronomers had had to choose an alternative system, traditional Aristotelian-Ptolemaic or radical Copernican, unless one sought such a solution as an eclectic model by Tycho Brahe. Even ultra-conservative geocentricists, if they would remain Ptolemaist, had to change some details of the traditional system for explaning with more plausible reasons various irregular movements of 'heavenly spheres' which Copercican seemed to solve ingeniously.
'Heavenly spheres' were drastically changed in the Renaissance Europe----------sometimes arbitrarily transformed into a reflection of particular ideas. This project has analyzed corresponding phenomena in contemporary English literature, particularly in Elizabethan dramas. Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare depicted an apparently Ptolemaic world in their plays, Doctor Faustus and Troilus and Cressida. They both deleted from their description of 'heavenly spheres' and apriori existence of invisible spheres, etc. Consequently, their 'heavenly spheres' were turned into a kind of imaginary canvass in which the dramatists freely drew their own political ideas, the fear of anarchism and absoluteness of kingship.
This project collected and analyzed various materials of Renaissance astronomy in 1995. In the second year, it focused on political ideas reflected in astronomical references by Elizabethan dramatists.
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Research Products
(2 results)
