Cosmopoetic Forms of Knowledge: Astronomy, Poetics, and Ideology in England, 1500—1800

该项目考察了知识在早期现代英格兰(1500-1800)的天文学、诗学和政治领域之间传播的形式。它是基于这样的观察，即知识只有通过形式的塑造才能获得权威，这种形式所固有的权威也将适用于采用类似形式的其他知识领域。具体地说，该项目研究天文知识及其调解形式如何获得思想和诗学意义。文本语料库包括，首先，非常流行的早期现代流派的年鉴以及针对类似广泛读者的天文教科书-即以实用的方式呈现天文知识并经常从意识形态上进行解释的流派。第二，将他们的形式策略与诗学和修辞学中对诗歌形式的同等评价相比较。第三，说教诗的体裁自我反省地(因此，自动诗意地)调解天文知识及其思想意义，从而将这三个领域联系在一起。在创造和调解天文知识时采用的正式战略不应仅仅被视为外部社会秩序的症状，而应被视为对这种社会秩序的积极干预。宇宙的(新)柏拉图式的统一、天球的等级或球体的和谐等形式要求权威，最初不是来自它们的天文物体，而是来自社会和诗歌的领域。然后，天文数字的“证据”反过来证实了这些陆地组织形式的合法性，或者要求重新评估它们。通俗流派的年鉴和教科书特别适合于将天文知识用于各种意识形态目的。“文学”这一新兴领域的制度，如诗学和修辞学著作，使我们能够从认识论和本体论的角度追溯其他世界的想象如何影响早期现代的模仿、创作和诗歌创作的思想。从这种双重视角审视文本，这种双重视角独特地融合在说教诗歌体裁中，使我们能够描述应用于早期现代天文知识的形式策略--即描述天文知识的诗意形成。相反，我们问，哪些形式的知识是从新科学的对象、方法和技术中提取出来的，并最终影响了早期现代英国的形式思想。从性别、阶级、宗教以及英式和欧式结构的角度考察了这种形式的意识形态“货物”及其塑造身份的功能。

The project examines the forms by which knowledge travels between the domains of astronomy, poetics, and politics in early modern England (1500—1800). It is based on the observation that knowledge acquires authority only through its formal shaping, and that this authority, inherent in the form, will also apply in other domains of knowledge in which similar forms are employed. Specifically, the project studies the ways in which astronomical knowledge and the forms used for its mediation acquire ideological and poetological meaning. The textual corpus includes, first, the immensely popular early modern genre of the almanac as well as astronomy textbooks directed at a similarly broad readership – i.e., genres in which astronomical knowledge is presented pragmatically and frequently interpreted ideologically. Their formal strategies are compared, second, to equally evaluative assessments of poetic form in poetics and rhetoric. Third, the genre of didactic poetry self-reflexively (and thus, auto-poetically) mediates astronomical knowledge and its ideological ‘meaning’, thus linking the three domains. The formal strategies employed in the creation and mediation of astronomical knowledge must not merely seen as symptoms of an external social order, but as active interventions in it. Forms such as the (neo-)Platonic unity of the cosmos, the hierarchy of the heavenly orbs or the harmony of the spheres stake a claim for authority that originally derives not from their astronomic objects, but from the spheres of society and poetry. Astronomical ‘evidence’ then, in turn, corroborates the legitimacy of these terrestrial forms of organization or calls for their re-assessment. The popular genres of the almanac and the textbook are particularly suited for appropriating astronomical knowledge to various ideological purposes. Institutions of the emergent domain of ‘literature’ such as works of poetics and rhetoric enable us to trace how the imagination of other worlds impacted early modern ideas of mimesis, authorship and poetic invention, both in epistemological and ontological terms. Examining texts from this double perspective, which is uniquely merged in the genre of didactic poetry, allows us to describe the formal strategies brought to bear on early modern astronomical knowledge – i.e., to describe the poetic formation of astronomical knowledge. Conversely, we ask which forms of knowledge are drawn from the objects, methods and technologies of the New Science and come to affect early modern English ideas of form. The ideological ‘cargo’ of such forms, and their function for fashioning identities, is examined with a view to gender, class, and religion, as well as constructions of Englishness and Europeanness.