The Refracted Muse: Literature and Optics in Early Modern Spain
Enrique Garciá Santo-Tomás
Abstract
The Refracted Muse: Literature and Optics in Early Modern Spain traces the arrival of Galileo Galilei’s telescope in Madrid in 1610, and its impact on 17th-century Spanish fiction. It examines a selection of satires, emblems, poems, and short dramatic pieces (and excerpts from longer ones) by writers such as Miguel de Cervantes, Félix Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Luis Vélez de Guevara, and Francisco de Quevedo, among others. It argues that the so-called ‘Scientific Revolution’ was much more noticeable in Spain than previously thought, given that many Spaniards, including those wor ... More
The Refracted Muse: Literature and Optics in Early Modern Spain traces the arrival of Galileo Galilei’s telescope in Madrid in 1610, and its impact on 17th-century Spanish fiction. It examines a selection of satires, emblems, poems, and short dramatic pieces (and excerpts from longer ones) by writers such as Miguel de Cervantes, Félix Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Luis Vélez de Guevara, and Francisco de Quevedo, among others. It argues that the so-called ‘Scientific Revolution’ was much more noticeable in Spain than previously thought, given that many Spaniards, including those working in academies and universities, were fully aware of some of the findings of the ‘new physics.’ The book is not only the story of Galileo’s presence in Spain, but also a study on the development of Baroque fiction in its interplay with science and technology, power, and religion. It opens an unexplored path in the study of early modern Spanish literature, that of the dialogue between its major writers and the development of optics in Castile and Aragón.
Keywords:
Galileo Galilei,
Spain,
literature,
optics,
Baroque
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226376462 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: January 2018 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226465876.001.0001 |
