Commonplaces of the Night Sky in English Poetry, 1729-1900

FAIN: FA-53337-07

Anne Frances Janowitz
Queen Mary University of London (London N10 1DN United Kingdom)

STELLAR POETICS: POETIC COMMONPLACES OF THE NIGHT SKY 1729-1880 analyses the traditions, themes, and topics of ‘night sky poetry.’ This 100,000 word book and bibliography of poems offers a comprehensive study of a ubiquitous though neglected genre of English poetry. Topics include: 1) poetic tradition (the genres of landscape poetry); 2) repeated themes and metaphors of night sky poetry-- for example, comets as omens and orbits, stars as ‘hieroglyphics of the night’, and the contest between street-light and starlight; 3) theories of infinity: the inter-related histories of the discourse of the sublime, and of the understanding of infinity within natural philosophy and mathematics.