Alastair Fowler's fascinating study explores the extraordinary prominence of astronomical imagery in Renaissance literature. He describes the forgotten Renaissance beliefs about stellification, an afterlife in the stars through metamorphosis into stellar or angelic substance. The new astronomy of Copernicus and Brahe, far from working against religious beliefs, encouraged hopes of access to the uncorrupted spheres. Fowler's many-faceted book scrutinizes these ideas--both sacred and scientific--as they manifested in literature, masques, architecture, and the pursuit of fame.
Alastair Fowler's fascinating study explores the extraordinary prominence of astronomical imagery in Renaissance literature. He describes the forgotte...
Early narratives have tended to be critiqued as novels, an approach that misses their distinctive Renaissance realism. Alastair Fowler surveys picturing and perspective from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth, drawing analogies between literature and visual art. The book is based on the history of the narrative imagination after single-point perspective. The habit of an older, multi-point perspective long continued, accounting for "anachronism," discontinuous realism, "double time-schemes," and depiction of different moments as simultaneous.
Early narratives have tended to be critiqued as novels, an approach that misses their distinctive Renaissance realism. Alastair Fowler surveys picturi...
A study of numerology in Elizabethan poetry, with some background studies which base the subject in classical learning, the works of Dante and Petrarch, and the esoteric traditions of the humanists. The central assumption of numerological criticism is that there exist works written in this tradition which show a correspondence between structure and meaning on a numerical plane; that is, one in which the number of the constituent parts (lines, stanzas, sonnets in a sequence) expresses a major aspect of the meaning. For instance parts of the whole can be arranged to represent months of the year...
A study of numerology in Elizabethan poetry, with some background studies which base the subject in classical learning, the works of Dante and Petrarc...
Alastair Fowler presents a fascinating study of title pages printed in England from the early modern period to the nineteenth century. He examines pictorial title pages in the context of the history of the book for the first time. The first part of The Mind of the Book explores the forerunner of the frontispiece in late antiquity, the use of frames and borders in title pages, portraits, printers' devices, emblematic title pages of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially attending to explanatory verses and arcane features such as chronograms, title pages as "memory...
Alastair Fowler presents a fascinating study of title pages printed in England from the early modern period to the nineteenth century. He examines pic...
