Through the Daemon's Gate: Kepler's “Somnium”, Medieval Dream Narratives, and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs (2004)
Swinford, Dean (Author)
University of Florida
Paxson, James J.
Edition Details: Advisor: Paxson, James J.
Physical Details: 340 pp.
Language: English
In Through the Daemon's Gate: Kepler's Somnium, Medieval Dream Narratives, and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs , I explore the narratological problem of allegorical signification through a comparative analysis of Johannes Kepler's Somnium and the medieval dream narrative. The Somnium fuses supernatural and scientific models of the cosmos, presenting a defense of Copernicanism within a proto-science fiction story featuring witches, lunar inhabitants, and a daemon who is particularly well-versed in both Neoplatonist and Copernican cosmological theories. My study extends and animates discussions proffered by Marjorie Nicholson, who established the Somnium as a key text for early modern English literature by linking Kepler to Donne and Milton. At the same time, it enters into dialogue with more recent criticism, including essays by Fernand Hallyn, Ladina Lambert, and James Paxson, on the rhetorical strategies employed in early modern accounts of science and exploration. While Kepler's debt to Neoplatonism is well documented, this is the first survey to examine one aspect of this influence, Kepler's use of the dream of the cosmos, in detail. My dissertation explores the generic qualities of the fabulous narrative as well as the categorization of dreams articulated by writers such as Macrobius and Artemidorus. This allows for a greater understanding not only of the Somnium , but of the philosophical transition from medieval to early modern in European culture. Kepler viewed astronomy as a form of theology. His preoccupation with the non- scientific could be said to outweigh, or at least to heavily influence, the parts of his work that retain their relevance. The baroque features of the Somnium indicate that, if Kepler is the Priest of an incipient modernity, as stipulated by Koyr, then this priesthood retains its ties to mysticism. The textual qualities of the Somnium emphasize this contradiction. There is an evident textual contrast between the text, a narratio fabulosa clearly indebted to the cosmological allegories of twelfth century Neoplatonists, and the voluminous footnotes, so suggestive of the language that replaced and rendered irrelevant the proto-scientific musings of the Neoplatonists. Still, these two components of the text are not so clearly divisible when considered in relation to Kepler's own philosophical preoccupations. Through the Daemon's Gate features two sections. The first section includes an introduction and four chapters dealing with medieval allegory. The second section consists of four studies of the Somnium .
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65/05 (2004): 1773. UMI pub. no. 3135221.
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