The Anatomy of Light: Astronomy, Optics ...
Type de document :
Compte-rendu et recension critique d'ouvrage
Titre :
The Anatomy of Light: Astronomy, Optics and Wave Dynamics in Percy B. Shelley’s Epipsychidion and The Triumph of Life
Auteur(s) :
Musitelli-Laniel, Sophie [Auteur]
Centre d'Études en Civilisations, Langues et Lettres Étrangères - ULR 4074 [CECILLE]
Centre d'Études en Civilisations, Langues et Lettres Étrangères - ULR 4074 [CECILLE]
Titre de la revue :
Etudes Anglaises
Pagination :
73-87
Éditeur :
Klincksieck
Date de publication :
2010-01-01
ISSN :
0014-195X
Mot(s)-clé(s) en anglais :
Optics
Wave dynamics
P.B. Shelley
Romanticism
Poetry
Physics
Wave dynamics
P.B. Shelley
Romanticism
Poetry
Physics
Discipline(s) HAL :
Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Littératures
Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences
Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences
Résumé en anglais : [en]
Faced with the growing cultural impact of science, the Romantic poets tended to consider scientific analysis and reasoning as a disfigurement of the beauty of the natural world. Percy B. Shelley used this very tendency to ...
Lire la suite >Faced with the growing cultural impact of science, the Romantic poets tended to consider scientific analysis and reasoning as a disfigurement of the beauty of the natural world. Percy B. Shelley used this very tendency to serve poetic ends. For him, optics and astronomy stand for the limitations of man’s point of view and for his inability to apprehend absolute beauty. In Epipsychidion (1821), Shelley refers to astronomy, because it has established that only a feeble glimmer of stellar light actually reaches the Earth. In The Triumph of Life (1822), the glimmer is then confined to the obscure tissues and humours of the eye, where, in accordance with Newton’s optics, it is broken up by refraction. Shelley even chooses the fate of light when it comes into contact with opaque bodies as a metaphor for the writing process. In Epipsychidion, the poem appears as a substitute light eclipsing the radiance it is trying to reveal, while in The Triumph of Life, Shelley resorts to Thomas Young’s wave theory of light to question the workings of poetic reference, turning his poem into an interference field.Lire moins >
Lire la suite >Faced with the growing cultural impact of science, the Romantic poets tended to consider scientific analysis and reasoning as a disfigurement of the beauty of the natural world. Percy B. Shelley used this very tendency to serve poetic ends. For him, optics and astronomy stand for the limitations of man’s point of view and for his inability to apprehend absolute beauty. In Epipsychidion (1821), Shelley refers to astronomy, because it has established that only a feeble glimmer of stellar light actually reaches the Earth. In The Triumph of Life (1822), the glimmer is then confined to the obscure tissues and humours of the eye, where, in accordance with Newton’s optics, it is broken up by refraction. Shelley even chooses the fate of light when it comes into contact with opaque bodies as a metaphor for the writing process. In Epipsychidion, the poem appears as a substitute light eclipsing the radiance it is trying to reveal, while in The Triumph of Life, Shelley resorts to Thomas Young’s wave theory of light to question the workings of poetic reference, turning his poem into an interference field.Lire moins >
Langue :
Anglais
Source :