Giordano Bruno et Robert Burton : deux styles littéraires pour une épistémè baroque
Between Bruno’s birth in 1548 and Burton’s death in 1640, the Ptolemaic cosmology derived from Aristotle, that of a closed world with a motionless earth as its fixed centre, finds itself increasingly questioned, while literature itself goes through a form of anticlassical mutiny. A whole series of w...
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Institut du Monde Anglophone
2006-04-01
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| Series: | Etudes Epistémè |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/2509 |
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| author | Gisèle Venet |
| author_facet | Gisèle Venet |
| author_sort | Gisèle Venet |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Between Bruno’s birth in 1548 and Burton’s death in 1640, the Ptolemaic cosmology derived from Aristotle, that of a closed world with a motionless earth as its fixed centre, finds itself increasingly questioned, while literature itself goes through a form of anticlassical mutiny. A whole series of works appear in print (among which Bruno’s), which gleefully transgress Aristotle’s rules; all relish in irregular decentering effects, playing with oppositions in hitherto unknown extreme ways, and playfully exploiting the oxymoron of the Petrarchan tradition and its voluptas dolendi. Relying on the dynamics of the coincidentia oppositorum devised by Nicholas de Cusa and extensively put to use by Bruno, these devices may have helped authors to meet the challenge re-launched by Copernicus and his heliocentric theory (with its corollary, the revolution of the earth around the sun and on itself). They may have been instrumental in contriving more appropriate responses to the Copernican hypothesis in physics and metaphysics. This paper claims that Bruno’s mannerist ’turn’ in prose and poetry, a poetics of linguistic contradiction, can be seen as a powerful instrument with which to uncover the contradictions posed by the new vision of the world. This turn freed him from inhibiting rules, leaving him unhampered not only to imagine a heliocentric world and a moving earth, but also to conceive other multiple solar worlds in an infinite universe. Under the mask of Democritus, Burton appears fascinated by Bruno’s hypotheses and other emerging cosmologies. In his freely meandering baroque essay, Burton temporarily abandons the theory of humours derived from the Aristotelian cosmology, to escape into a « digression of air » that allows for a meditation on new cosmological models and calculations, including a new version of the baroque topos of the world-upside-down that takes after Bruno’s vision of innumerable worlds in an infinite universe. Both Bruno and Burton invite us to reconsider mannerist and baroque aesthetics in literature as epistemological metaphors for compelling modes of thought. New ways of thinking about epistemes thus found their way into existence through the flexibility of language and literary forms before they could actually make a difference in the history of science. The aesthetic approach of literary works is too often denied by historians of science its value as a form of ’epistemology in progress’. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-d59568e506784642887ad955a2a7b3c2 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 1634-0450 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2006-04-01 |
| publisher | Institut du Monde Anglophone |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Etudes Epistémè |
| spelling | doaj-art-d59568e506784642887ad955a2a7b3c22025-08-20T03:07:23ZengInstitut du Monde AnglophoneEtudes Epistémè1634-04502006-04-01910.4000/episteme.2509Giordano Bruno et Robert Burton : deux styles littéraires pour une épistémè baroqueGisèle VenetBetween Bruno’s birth in 1548 and Burton’s death in 1640, the Ptolemaic cosmology derived from Aristotle, that of a closed world with a motionless earth as its fixed centre, finds itself increasingly questioned, while literature itself goes through a form of anticlassical mutiny. A whole series of works appear in print (among which Bruno’s), which gleefully transgress Aristotle’s rules; all relish in irregular decentering effects, playing with oppositions in hitherto unknown extreme ways, and playfully exploiting the oxymoron of the Petrarchan tradition and its voluptas dolendi. Relying on the dynamics of the coincidentia oppositorum devised by Nicholas de Cusa and extensively put to use by Bruno, these devices may have helped authors to meet the challenge re-launched by Copernicus and his heliocentric theory (with its corollary, the revolution of the earth around the sun and on itself). They may have been instrumental in contriving more appropriate responses to the Copernican hypothesis in physics and metaphysics. This paper claims that Bruno’s mannerist ’turn’ in prose and poetry, a poetics of linguistic contradiction, can be seen as a powerful instrument with which to uncover the contradictions posed by the new vision of the world. This turn freed him from inhibiting rules, leaving him unhampered not only to imagine a heliocentric world and a moving earth, but also to conceive other multiple solar worlds in an infinite universe. Under the mask of Democritus, Burton appears fascinated by Bruno’s hypotheses and other emerging cosmologies. In his freely meandering baroque essay, Burton temporarily abandons the theory of humours derived from the Aristotelian cosmology, to escape into a « digression of air » that allows for a meditation on new cosmological models and calculations, including a new version of the baroque topos of the world-upside-down that takes after Bruno’s vision of innumerable worlds in an infinite universe. Both Bruno and Burton invite us to reconsider mannerist and baroque aesthetics in literature as epistemological metaphors for compelling modes of thought. New ways of thinking about epistemes thus found their way into existence through the flexibility of language and literary forms before they could actually make a difference in the history of science. The aesthetic approach of literary works is too often denied by historians of science its value as a form of ’epistemology in progress’.https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/2509 |
| spellingShingle | Gisèle Venet Giordano Bruno et Robert Burton : deux styles littéraires pour une épistémè baroque Etudes Epistémè |
| title | Giordano Bruno et Robert Burton : deux styles littéraires pour une épistémè baroque |
| title_full | Giordano Bruno et Robert Burton : deux styles littéraires pour une épistémè baroque |
| title_fullStr | Giordano Bruno et Robert Burton : deux styles littéraires pour une épistémè baroque |
| title_full_unstemmed | Giordano Bruno et Robert Burton : deux styles littéraires pour une épistémè baroque |
| title_short | Giordano Bruno et Robert Burton : deux styles littéraires pour une épistémè baroque |
| title_sort | giordano bruno et robert burton deux styles litteraires pour une episteme baroque |
| url | https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/2509 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT giselevenet giordanobrunoetrobertburtondeuxstyleslitterairespouruneepistemebaroque |