Galileo never set foot on the Iberian Peninsula, yet, as Enrique Garcia Santo-Tomas unfolds in The Refracted Muse, the news of his work with telescopes brought him to surprising prominence--not just among Spaniards working in the developing science of optometry but among creative writers as well.

While Spain is often thought to have taken little notice of the Scientific Revolution, Garcia Santo-Tomas tells a different story, one that reveals Golden Age Spanish literature to be in close dialogue with the New Science. Drawing on the work of writers such as Cervantes, Lope de Vega,...