Overview

These essays throw new light on the complex relations between science, literature and rhetoric as avenues to discovery in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds examine the agency of early modern poets, playwrights, essayists, philosophers, natural philosophers and artists in remaking their culture and reforming ideas about human understanding. Analyzing the ways in which the works of such diverse writers as Shakespeare, Bacon, Hobbes, Milton, Cavendish, Boyle, Pope and Behn related to contemporary epistemological debates, these essays move us toward a better understanding of interactions between the sciences and the humanities during a seminal phase in the emergence of modern Western thought.

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9781138265318

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Reviews

'... succeeds in assembling wide-ranging and frequently provocative studies that, individually and collectively, mark a welcome contribution to the field... This fine collection provides a wealth of material and rhetorical modes of framing and reframing natural philosophy in the early modern period, particularly during the late seventeenth century.' Renaissance Quarterly 'Realizing that disciplinary centers do not hold in our own space and time any more than they did for past cultures, these skillful interdisciplinary scholars illustrate the ongoing complexity, value and importance of crafting their own content and rhetoric to construct and communicate knowledge within and across multiple audiences simultaneously.' Early Science and Medicine 'The editors set out to provide scholars and students of early modern studies with a new way to understand disciplinary interactions of the period. Certainly, they achieve this goal, but this collection is an intriguing and sturdy starting point for more endeavours of the sort, a necessity of the project's vast aim.' Renaissance Studies '... a useful and interesting volume.' British Society for Literature and Science

Author Information

Juliet Cummins is Honorary Research Advisor in the English Department at the University of Queensland, Australia. David Burchell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.

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