Imagining the Extra-Terrestrial ‘Other’ in Early Modern Literature

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Contents V
3. Introduction: Writing the Heavens 1
4. I The Middle Ages
5. Mirari faciunt magis hec quam scire: Ways of (Not) Understanding the Cosmos in Johannes de Hauvilla’s Architrenius 15
6. Between Nigromancy and Erudite meisterschaft: Astronomical-Cosmological Knowledge in Middle High German Sangspruchdichtung 35
7. Astronomical (In)accuracy in Heinrich von Mügeln’s Der meide kranz 51
8. The Astronomical Treatise Von den 11 Himmelssphären and Its Relation to the Iatromathematisches Hausbuch 69
9. II The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
10. Heavenly Theater: Writing about Astronomy and Astrology in Jean Bodin’s Démonomanie des sorciers 95
11. Astronomy for the Public 109
12. Anatomical Descriptions in Star Catalogues: Ptolemy, Brahe, Halley, and Hevelius 135
13. III The Long Eighteenth Century
14. Imagining the Extra-Terrestrial ‘Other’ in Early Modern Literature 159
15. Celestial Education 181
16. The End of ‘Heavenly Writing’, or: Speech of the Dead Christ down from the Universe That There Is No God (1796) 203
17. IV Early Modern China
18. Chinese Heavens in European Literatures, c. 1650–1700 225
19. “Heavenly Patterns” and Everyday Life in a Nutshell: Astronomy in Pre-Modern Chinese Handy Encyclopaedias 245
20. List of Contributors 271
21. Index of Names 277