The contributions to
Making of Copernicus examine exemplarily how some of the Copernicus myths came about and if they could hold their ground or have vanished again. Are there links between a factual or postulated transformation of world images and the application of certain scientific metaphors, especially the metaphor of a revolution? Were there interactions and amalgamations of the literary and scientific enthronement, or outlawry of Copernicus and if so, how did they take place? On the other hand, are there repercussions of the scientific-historical reconstructions and hagiographies on the literary image of Copernicus as sketched by novelists even in the 20th century? The history of the reception of Copernicus shall not be dominantly dealt with from the point of view of a factual affirmation and rejection of the astronomer and his doctrine but rather as accomplishments of transformation respectively. Thus, the essays in this volume investigate transformations: methodological, institutional, textual, and visual transformations of the Copernican doctrine and the topical, rhetorical and literary transformations of the historical person of Copernicus respectively.
Thomas Rahn gained his doctorate at the Philipps-Universität Marburg (2001) and teaches German Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin. He has published books and articles on Early Modern theatre and court culture, rhetoric and the typographic dimensions of texts.
Wolfgang Neuber has been Full Professor of German Philology/Early Modern German and Neo-Latin Literature in the European Context and Head of the ‘Forschungsstelle für Mittlere Deutsche Literatur’ at Freie Universität Berlin since 2000; he is currently on a five-year leave of absence to teach literature at New York University in Abu Dhabi. He has published extensively on early modern travel accounts (including "Fremde Welt im europäischen Horizont", 1991) and is currently preparing a book on early modern European family books.
Claus Zittel teaches German literature and philosophy at the Universities of Stuttgart, Frankfurt am Main, and Olsztyn (Poland), and is deputy director of the Stuttgart Research Centre for Text Studies. He has published monographs, editions and many articles on Early Modern Philosophy and Literature and Philosophy, including
The Artist as Reader (Brill 2013).
“Recommended. Researchers/faculty and professionals.“
Mary Kay Hemenway, University of Texas at Austin. In:
CHOICE, Vol. 52, No. 11 (July 2015).
“excellent essays.”
André Goddu, Stonehill College. In:
Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Spring 2016), pp. 264-266.
Notes on the Editors
Notes on the Contributors
List of Illustrations
Introduction: The Making of Copernicus
WOLFGANG NEUBER, THOMAS RAHN, CLAUS ZITTEL
PART ONE
THE COPERNICAN TURN:
METHODOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND REJECTIONS
The Decline of Medieval Disputation Culture and the ‘Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory’
STEFAN KIRSCHNER, ANDREAS KÜHNE
The Silence of the Wolves, Or, Why it Took the Holy Inquisition Seventy-Three Years to Ban Copernicanism
GEREON WOLTERS
A Natural History of the Heavens: Francis Bacon’s Anti-Copernicanism
DANA JALOBEANU
Hume’s Copernican Turn
TAMÁS DEMETER
PART TWO
NEW ASTRONOMY: TEXTUAL AND GRAPHIC TRANSFORMATIONS
Arguing for One’s World. Copernicus’s Theories and Their Reception in Jean Bodins Theatrum
JONATHAN SCHÜZ
Writing after Copernicus. Epistemology and Poetics in Giordano Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper
STEFFEN SCHNEIDER
Die Erde als Mond. Kopernikanische Wenden in Raumreiserzählungen des 17. Jahrhunderts (Kepler, Godwin, Cyrano de Bergerac)
THOMAS RAHN
Decentralisation of the Sun as Beginning of Modernity. The Transition from Copernicanism to the Plurality of Worlds in French Engravings
LUCÍA AYALA
PART THREE
NEW ASTRONOMERS: BIOGRAPHICAL TRANSFORMATIONS
Timid Mathematicians vs. Daring Explorers of the Infinite Cosmos: Giordano Bruno, Literary Self-Fashioning and De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.
SERGIUS KODERA
‘Copernicus Found a Treasure the True Value of Which He Did Not Know at All’. The Life of Copernicus by Pierre Gassendi
CLAUS ZITTEL
Hero of the Bourgeois World. Copernicus and His Afterlife in German Literature
WOLFGANG NEUBER
Max Brod: Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott
JÖRG JUNGMAYR
Index Nominum
All those interested in Copernicus, history of science, transformation of images of the world, and application of metaphors in science.