Donne and the Sidereus Nuncius: Astronomy, Method and Metaphor in 1611 by John Piers Russell Brown A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by John Piers Russell Brown 2009 Abstract: “Donne and the Sidereus nuncius: Astronomy, Method and Metaphor in 1611” Piers Brown, PhD., Department of English, University of Toronto, 2009 John Donne’s poetry has long been famous for its metaphysical conceits, which powerfully register the impact of the “New Philosophy,” yet the question of how his work is implicated in the new forms of knowledge-making that exploded in the early seventeenth century has remained unanswered. “Donne and the Sidereus nuncius” examines the relation between method and metaphor on the cusp of the Scientific Revolution by reading the poetry and prose of Donne in the context of developments in early modern astronomy, anatomy and natural philosophy. I focus primarily on two texts, Ignatius, his Conclave (1610) and the Anniversaries (1611-2), which are linked not only by chronology, but also by their mutual concern with the effects of distorted perception on the process of understanding the universe. Written directly after the publication of Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius (1610), these works offer a historicized perspective on Donne’s changing use of scientific metaphor in relation to the transformative crux of the discovery of the telescope, which provided a startling new optical metaphor for the process of knowing. In this context, “Donne and the Sidereus nuncius” considers the conceptual work performed by scientific metaphor as part of an ongoing transformation from emblematic to analogic figuration. Donne’s search for material that is, in his phrase, “appliable” to other subjects, depends on an analogic conception of metaphor, a comparison that enables new thinking by identifying underlying commonalities between disparate objects. Building on this understanding of metaphor as comparative, I examine Donne’s self- conscious use of metaphors of methodical knowledge making—invention, innovation, ii anatomy and progress—in the context of instrumental metaphors, such as the telescope, spectacles, perspective, and travel narratives. In doing so, I suggest that Donne’s metaphorical conceits explore the conflict between scientific attempts to discern order in nature and the distorting effects of methodological frameworks imposed on the object of analysis. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation, like almost every other, was not written in isolation. I am deeply grateful to those who have supported me and my work over the years. My largest debts are to my committee. My supervisor, Elizabeth Harvey, has been unfailingly supportive, insightful, and incisive. Paul Stevens and to David Galbraith encouraged my work and pushed me to think hard about its assumptions. Many faculty in the Department of English and the Book History and Print Culture Program have generous with their time and interest, particularly, Lynn Magnuson, Randy McLeod, Alex Gillespie, Holger Schott-Syme, Peter Blayney, Chris Warley, Maria Zytaruk, Heather Jackson, Deidre Lynch, and Julian Patrick. I am also grateful to the other scholars who have taken the time to talk with me about my project at the University of Toronto and elsewhere, including Andreas Motsch, Ken Mills, Brian Baigrie, Lawrin Armstrong, Arjan Chakravarty, Christy Anderson, Peter Stallybrass, Roger Chartier, Eileen Reeves, Elizabeth Spiller, Anne Prescott, Achsah Guibbory, and Jeffrey Johnson. My undergraduate career at Langara College and Simon Fraser University, was formative for the work I did at graduate school. I am particularly indebted to John Webb, Paul Headrick, James Fleming, Sheila Roberts, Paul Budra, Tom Grieve, Margret Linley, and John Craig. Both my life and work at Toronto would not have been the same without the community of students in the English Department and elsewhere, especially, Chris Hicklin, Chris Matusiak, Gin Strain, Rory McKweon, Scott Schofield, Michael Ullyot, Katie Larson, Jackie Wylde, Erin Ellerbeck, Lisa Chen, Nora Ruddock, Yuri Cowan, Elizabeth Dickens, Stephanie Peña-Sy, Rob Carson, Sarah Brouillette, Travis de Cook, iv Sarah Guerin, and Hannah Moland. Extra special thanks to Darryl Domingo, Suzanne Gregoire , Rebbeca Tierney-Hynes, Rebekah Carson, Anton Petrenko, Betsy and Tay Moss, Stuart Parker, Rachel Gostenhofer, Lisa Sumner, and Brian Morgan, for their friendship and help in the final stages. I am grateful for the financial support of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, the Government of Ontario, the family of Christopher Wallis, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Finally, I would not be where I am today without the support of my family: Rosalie, Mark, Ferique, Peter and Lynne. I dedicate the dissertation to Flora Ward who saw me through all this, and who I imagine is looking forward to knowing me when I am not writing it. v Contents List of Figures vii Introduction: “All in Doubt?”: John Donne and the Scientific 1 Revolution Chapter One: Moving the Earth and Drawing Down the Moon: 36 Donne, Galileo, Kepler, and the Reception of Copernicus Chapter Two: “Old Men’s Spectacles”: Innovation, Chronology, 109 and the History of Knowledge in Ignatius, his Conclave Chapter Three: “The world in peeces”: Grief, Anatomy, and 173 Vision in “An Anatomy of the World” Chapter Four: “By circuit and collections to discerne”: The 261 Trajectory of Progress and the Commemoration of Elizabeth Drury Conclusion: “The Copernicus of Poesie” 309 Works Consulted 312 Copyright Acknowledgements 381 vi List of Figures Figure 1.1. The Astro-peolico-pyrgium. Frontispiece, Johannes Kepler, Tabulae Rudolphinae. 1627. Figure 3.1. Title Page. Andreas Vesalius, De fabrica. Basel, 1543. (Anatomia 1522-1867: Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, digital collection) Figure 3.2. Title Page. Jean Riolan, Encheiridium anatomicum et pathologicum. Leiden, 1649. (Anatomia 1522-1867: Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, digital collection) Figure 3.3. Title Page. Pieter Paaw, Succenturiatus anatomicus, continens commentaria in Hippocratem, De capitis vulneribus: additae in aliquot capita libri VIII. C. Celsi Explicationes. Leiden, 1616. (Philip Oldfield and Richard Landon, Ars Medica: Medical Illustration through the Ages. Toronto: Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, 2006, fig. 30.) Figure 3.4. Humani corporis ossium cæteris quas sustinent partibus liberorum suaque sede positorum ex latero delineatio. Andreas Vesalius, De fabrica. Basel, 1543. (Anatomia 1522-1867: Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, digital collection) vii Figure 3.5. Prima musculorum tabula. Andreas Vesalius, De fabrica. Basel, 1543. (Anatomia 1522-1867: Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, digital collection) Figure 3.6. Surface anatomy of female figure. Johann Remmelin, Catoptrum microcosmicum. Ulm, 1639. (Anatomia 1522-1867: Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, digital collection) Figure 3.7. Muscles of the foot and leg. Andreas Vesalius, De fabrica. Basel, 1543. (J. B. De C. M. Saunders and Charles D. O’Malley, The Illustrations from the Words of Andreas Vesalius of Brussels. Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1950, plate 38.) Figure 3.8. Tertia quinti libri figura. Andreas Vesalius, De fabrica. Basel, 1543. (Anatomia 1522-1867: Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, digital collection) Figure 3.9. Venarum et item arteriarum omnium integra aboluta que delineatio. Andreas Vesalius, De fabrica. Basel, 1543. (Anatomia 1522-1867: Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, digital collection) Figure 3.10. Tongue with its muscles. Andreas Vesalius, De fabrica. Basel, 1543. (J. B. DeC. M. Saunders and Charles D. O’Malley, The Illustrations from the Words of Andreas viii Vesalius of Brussels. Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1950, plate 40.) Figure 3.11. Zodiac man. Johannes de Ketham, Fasciculus medicinæ. Venice, 1522 (Anatomia 1522-1867: Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, digital collection) Figure 3.12. Corporis humani ossa posteriori facie proposita. Andreas Vesalius, De fabrica. Basel, 1543. (Anatomia 1522-1867: Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, digital collection) Figure 3.13. Detail from Surface anatomy of female figure. Johann Remmelin, Catoptrum microcosmicum. Ulm, 1639. (Anatomia 1522-1867: Anatomical Plates from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, digital collection) ix 1 Introduction: All in doubt? John Donne and the Scientific Revolution And new Philosophy cals all in doubt, The Element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, th’earth, and no man’s wit Can well direct him, where to look for it, And freely men confesse, that this world’s spent, When in the Planets, and the Firmament They seek so many new; they see that this Is crumbled out againe to his Atomis. ‘Tis all in pieces, all cohaerence gone; All iust supply, and all Relation: Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot, For every man alone thinkes he hath got To be a Phoenix, and that there can bee None of that kinde, of which he is, but hee.1 1 “An Anatomy of the World,” lines 205-17. With publication of the Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, ed. Gary A. Stringer, et al., still ongoing, the choice of texts for Donne’s poetic works remains