The Moon and the Western Imagination

The Moon and the Western Imagination PDF Author: Scott L. Montgomery
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816547742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The Moon is at once a face with a thousand expressions and the archetypal planet. Throughout history it has been gazed upon by people of every culture in every walk of life. From early perceptions of the Moon as an abode of divine forces, humanity has in turn accepted the mathematized Moon of the Greeks, the naturalistic lunar portrait of Jan van Eyck, and the telescopic view of Galileo. Scott Montgomery has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon has been visualized in Western culture through the ages, revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate mankind's changing concept of the nature and significance of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn of modern science. Montgomery especially focuses on the seventeenth century, when the Moon was first mapped and its features named. From literary explorations such as Francis Godwin's Man in the Moone and Cyrano de Bergerac's L'autre monde to Michael Van Langren's textual lunar map and Giambattista Riccioli's Almagestum novum, he shows how Renaissance man was moved by the lunar orb, how he battled to claim its surface, and how he in turn elevated the Moon to a new level in human awareness. The effect on human imagination has been cumulative: our idea of the Moon, and therefore the planets, is multilayered and complex, having been enriched by associations played out in increasingly complicated harmonies over time. We have shifted the way we think about the lunar face from a "perfect" body to an earthlike one, with corresponding changes in verbal and visual expression. Ultimately, Montgomery suggests, our concept of the Moon has never wandered too far from the world we know best—the Earth itself. And when we finally establish lunar bases and take up some form of residence on the Moon's surface, we will not be conquering a New World, fresh and mostly unknown, but a much older one, ripe with history.

The Moon and the Western Imagination

The Moon and the Western Imagination PDF Author: Scott L. Montgomery
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816547742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Moon is at once a face with a thousand expressions and the archetypal planet. Throughout history it has been gazed upon by people of every culture in every walk of life. From early perceptions of the Moon as an abode of divine forces, humanity has in turn accepted the mathematized Moon of the Greeks, the naturalistic lunar portrait of Jan van Eyck, and the telescopic view of Galileo. Scott Montgomery has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon has been visualized in Western culture through the ages, revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate mankind's changing concept of the nature and significance of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn of modern science. Montgomery especially focuses on the seventeenth century, when the Moon was first mapped and its features named. From literary explorations such as Francis Godwin's Man in the Moone and Cyrano de Bergerac's L'autre monde to Michael Van Langren's textual lunar map and Giambattista Riccioli's Almagestum novum, he shows how Renaissance man was moved by the lunar orb, how he battled to claim its surface, and how he in turn elevated the Moon to a new level in human awareness. The effect on human imagination has been cumulative: our idea of the Moon, and therefore the planets, is multilayered and complex, having been enriched by associations played out in increasingly complicated harmonies over time. We have shifted the way we think about the lunar face from a "perfect" body to an earthlike one, with corresponding changes in verbal and visual expression. Ultimately, Montgomery suggests, our concept of the Moon has never wandered too far from the world we know best—the Earth itself. And when we finally establish lunar bases and take up some form of residence on the Moon's surface, we will not be conquering a New World, fresh and mostly unknown, but a much older one, ripe with history.

The Moon & the Western Imagination

The Moon & the Western Imagination PDF Author: Scott L. Montgomery
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816519897
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The Moon is at once a face with a thousand expressions and the archetypal planet. Throughout history it has been gazed upon by people of every culture in every walk of life. From early perceptions of the Moon as an abode of divine forces, humanity has in turn accepted the mathematized Moon of the Greeks, the naturalistic lunar portrait of Jan van Eyck, and the telescopic view of Galileo. Scott Montgomery has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon has been visualized in Western culture through the ages, revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate mankind's changing concept of the nature and significance of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn of modern science. Montgomery especially focuses on the seventeenth century, when the Moon was first mapped and its features named. From literary explorations such as Francis Godwin's Man in the Moone and Cyrano de Bergerac's L'autre monde to Michael Van Langren's textual lunar map and Giambattista Riccioli's Almagestum novum, he shows how Renaissance man was moved by the lunar orb, how he battled to claim its surface, and how he in turn elevated the Moon to a new level in human awareness. The effect on human imagination has been cumulative: our idea of the Moon, and therefore the planets, is multilayered and complex, having been enriched by associations played out in increasingly complicated harmonies over time. We have shifted the way we think about the lunar face from a "perfect" body to an earthlike one, with corresponding changes in verbal and visual expression. Ultimately, Montgomery suggests, our concept of the Moon has never wandered too far from the world we know best—the Earth itself. And when we finally establish lunar bases and take up some form of residence on the Moon's surface, we will not be conquering a New World, fresh and mostly unknown, but a much older one, ripe with history.

The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope

The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope PDF Author: Samuel Y. Edgerton
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801474804
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Edgerton shows how linear perspective emerged in early fifteenth-century Florence out of an artistic and religious context in which devout Christians longed for divine presence in their daily lives and ultimately undermined medieval Christian cosmology.

Milton’s Moving Bodies

Milton’s Moving Bodies PDF Author: Marissa Greenberg
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810147416
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
A collection of innovative examinations of embodiment in Milton’s oeuvre that challenge assumptions about disciplinary boundaries This volume brings unprecedented focus to the forms, spaces, and implications of embodied motion in Milton’s writing and its afterlives to explore how and why he privileges the body—human and textual—as a site of dynamic movement. The contributors bring a variety of lenses to Milton’s moving bodies: political history, kinematics, mathematics, cosmology, translation, illustration, anatomies of racialized and disabled bodies, and twenty-first-century pedagogies. From these wide-ranging vantage points, they consider anew Milton’s contributions to the histories of scientific development, global exploration and imperial expansion, migration and diaspora, and translation and adaptation in England, Europe, and the Americas, from the early modern period to today. Milton’s Moving Bodies draws together established and emerging scholars, offering fresh analyses of the poet’s legacy for multiple traditions within and beyond Milton studies.

Observing the Moon

Observing the Moon PDF Author: Peter T. Wlasuk
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1447104838
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Why write another guide to observing the Moon? That was the question I was pondering as I began this project, having a fine collection of "classic" lunar guidebooks dating back to 1791 in my own library. As a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), member of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences (AAS DPS), and member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), I am fortunate to know many pro fessionallunar scientists who keep me up to date with developments in lunar scienc- contrary to public perception, lunar science has definitely not stagnated since the last Apollo, No. 17, left the surface of the Moon in December, 1972. I am also lucky to know many amateur lunar observers, who, like me, enjoy actually looking at the Moon with tele scopes and imaging it with a wide variety of devices ranging from regular 35 mm cameras to video recorders and CCD cameras. My friends who study the Moon, whether in their professions or just for fun, gave me several reasons for doing "another" lunar guidebook. First, the last lunar observer's guide of any length was published over ten years ago, and many reviewers noted that it was badly out of date even then.

Feminist Formalism and Early Modern Women's Writing

Feminist Formalism and Early Modern Women's Writing PDF Author: Lara Dodds
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496220420
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This volume examines the relationship between gender and form in early modern women’s writing by exploring women’s debts to and appropriations of different literary genres and offering practical suggestions for the teaching of women’s texts.

Shamans

Shamans PDF Author: Ronald Hutton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 082644637X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
With their ability to enter trances, to change into the bodies of other creatures, and to fly through the northern skies, shamans are the subject of both popular and scholarly fascination. In Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination Ronald Hutton looks at what is really known about both the shamans of Siberia and about others spread throughout the world. He traces the growth of knowledge of shamans in Imperial and Stalinist Russia, descibes local variations and different types of shamanism, and explores more recent western influences on its history and modern practice. This is a challenging book by one of the world's leading authorities on Paganism.

Moon

Moon PDF Author: Bernd Brunner
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300168705
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Using werewolves and Wernher von Braun, Stonehenge and the sex lives of sea corals, aboriginal myths, and an Anglican bishop in this new book, the author weaves variegated information into a glimpse of Earth's closest celestial neighbor, whose mere presence inspires us to wonder what might be out there. Going beyond the discoveries of contemporary science, he presents a cultural assessment of our complex relationship with Earth's lifeless, rocky satellite. As well as offering an engaging perspective on such age old questions as "What would Earth be like without the moon?" he surveys the moon's mythical and religious significance and provokes existential soul searching through a lunar lens, inquiring, "Forty years ago, the first man put his footprint on the moon. Will we continue to use it as the screen onto which we cast our hopes and fears?" Drawing on materials from different cultures and epochs, he walks readers down a moonlit path illuminated by more than seventy-five vintage photographs and illustrations. From scientific discussions of the moon's origins and its chronobiological effects on the mating and feeding habits of animals to an illuminating interpretation of Bishop Francis Godwin's 1638 novel The Man in the Moone, his interdisciplinary explorations recast a familiar object in an original light.

Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich PDF Author: Sabine Rewald
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN: 1588390047
Category : Moon
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), a major figure in the German Romantic movement, painted sublime works representing nature at its most melancholic and desolate. One of his most famous motifs was that of two intimate figures, seen from behind, gazing at the moon. Friedrich painted three versions of this theme, one of which -- Two Men Contemplating the Moon -- has recently been acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The book discusses the Metropolitan's painting in conjunction with the other two versions and a number of related paintings and drawings by Friedrich and his Dresden friends. It also presents fascinating details about the moon itself -- including what was known about it in Friedrich's lifetime and its presence and symbolism in contemporary Romantic poetry.

The Moon

The Moon PDF Author: Oliver Morton
Publisher: The Economist
ISBN: 154176806X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
An intimate portrait of the Earth's closest neighbor--the Moon--that explores the history and future of humankind's relationship with it Every generation has looked towards the heavens and wondered at the beauty of the Moon. Fifty years ago, a few Americans became the first to do the reverse--and shared with Earth-bound audiences the view of their own planet hanging in the sky instead. Recently, the connection has been discovered to be even closer: a fragment of the Earth's surface was found embedded in a rock brought back from the Moon. And astronauts are preparing to return to the surface of the Moon after a half-century hiatus--this time to the dark side. Oliver Morton explores how the ways we have looked at the Moon have shaped our perceptions of the Earth: from the controversies of early astronomers such as van Eyck and Galileo, to the Cold War space race, to the potential use of the Moon as a stepping stone for further space exploration. Advanced technologies, new ambitions, and old dreams mean that men, women, and robots now seem certain to return to the Moon. For some, it is a future on which humankind has turned its back for too long. For others, an adventure yet to begin.