Fictions of the cosmos : science and literature in the seventeenth century / Frédérique Aït-Touati ; translated by Susan Emanuel.

Poétiques du discours cosmologique au XVIIe siècle. English

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, [2011], ©2011.

ix, 261 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part 1. Cosmic imagination. Kepler sets the Earth in motion ; Genealogy of the dream: from ludus philosophicus to the game of fiction ; The dynamics of the voyage: a thought-experiment ; Vision in the voyage ; The place of fiction ; Godwin, Wilkins, Cyrano: from the optical voyage to the mechanical voyage ; The Man in the Moone ; A World in the Moon ; From heavens to the sky: Cyrano's other world ; Conclusion: dreams and fictions -- part 2. Conjectural machines. Fontenelle: unveiling the spectacle of the world ; Machine and spectacle ; Order of the narrative, harmony of the world ; Fontenelle's visions ; Huygens: the theoretical voyage of The Cosmotheoros ; Hypotheses, conjectures, fictions ; Architectonics of the narrative ; Conclusion: hypotheses and narratives -- part 3. Observing monsters. Robert Hooke: "the armed eye" ; Micrographia ; From enargeia to evidence ; Hooke the astronomer ; Poetics of proof ; Conclusion: Instruments and images ; Margaret Cavendish: the battle of instruments ; "A high heel to a short leg" ; A teratology of knowledge ; The empire of fiction Conclusion.

Translated from the French.