David H. Levy

The Sky in Early Modern English Literature (eBook, PDF)

A Study of Allusions to Celestial Events in Elizabethan and Jacobean Writing, 1572-1620

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

When a dissertation gets completed, the normal rule is that it is never read. By anyone. David H. Levy's dissertation - The Sky in Early Modern English Literature: A Study of Allusions to Celestial Events in Elizabethan and Jacobean Writing, 1572-1620 - is different. It opens a whole new interdisciplinary field, which involves the beautiful relationship between the night sky and the works of the early modern period of English Literature. Although the sky enters into much of literature through the ages, the period involving William Shakespeare and his colleagues is particularly rich.

When Shakespeare was about 8 years old, his father probably took him outside his Stratford home into their northward-facing back yard. There, father and son gazed upon the first great new star visible in the past 500 years, shining forth as brightly as Venus, and even visible in daylight. This new star, which we now know as a supernova, completely unhinged old ideas about the cosmos. Combined with a parade of bright comets, a second bright new star in 1604, and a series of eclipses, people began to look at the sky more seriously. In this book, Levy explores how the sky of that period was reflected in its literature.

Levy's ultimate goal in this book is to inspire his readers to do the same thing as their ancestors did so long ago-look at the sky and appreciate how those long-gone authors read the sky.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Springer New York
• Seitenzahl: 111
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. April 2011
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781441978141
• Artikelnr.: 37355088

Autorenporträt

David H. Levy is President of the National Sharing the Sky Foundation, and is one of the most successful comet discoverers in history. He has discovered 22 comets (8 of them using his own backyard telescopes) and was co-discoverer of Shoemaker-Levy 9, the comet that collided with Jupiter in 1994 producing the most spectacular explosions ever witnessed in the Solar System. Asteroid 3673 (Levy) was named in his honor. He has written several books, is a contributing editor and monthly columnist for Astronomy, and was the former Science Editor for Parade magazine. In 1998 he won an Emmy as part of the writing team for the Discovery Channel documentary 'Three Minutes to Impact'.

Inhaltsangabe

Abstract.- Preface.- General Introduction.- Chapter One: The Stella Novae of 1572 and 1604.- Chapter Two: Comets and Meteors: A Rich Harvest from 1573 to 1607.- Chapter Three: These Late Eclipses.- Chapter Four: Of Signs and Seasons.- Chapter Five: The Telescope in Early Modern English Literature.- Appendix: A Selection of References to the Sky in Writings from 1572 to 1620.- Postscript.- Works cited.