Cosmographical Novelties in French Renaissance Prose (1550–1630): Dialectic and Discovery by Raphaele Garrod

Abstract

Reviewed by: Cosmographical Novelties in French Renaissance Prose (1550–1630): Dialectic and Discovery by Raphaele Garrod Véronique Duché Garrod, Raphaele, Cosmographical Novelties in French Renaissance Prose (1550–1630): Dialectic and Discovery (Early European Research, 9), Turnhout, Brepols, 2016; hardback; pp. x, 389; 12 b/w illustrations, 7 b/w tables; R.R.P. €100.00; ISBN 9782503550459. This impressive book explores how cosmological and cosmographical 'novelties' were explained and presented in early modern France—at a time when Tycho Brahe discovered new stars, Copernicus and Kepler observed comets, and Galileo invented the telescope, we can understand the epistemic 'trouble' it created. Situated at the intersection of intellectual history and the history of science, this book investigates 'the role of dialectical invention in the textual shaping and popularization of some of the major epistemic changes of the early modern period' (p. 14). Focusing on cosmology (the study of the universe as a whole), and cosmography, 'the description of the earth within the greater system of the world' (p. 212), the author studies the 'rhetorical and poetic fabric' of five French Renaissance prose texts. She shows how language shaped the scholarly view of the natural worlds and describes how 'the loci of dialectical invention actually contributed to the articulation, dissemination, and assessment of new cosmological and cosmographical representations' (p. 10) not only in scientific but also in vernacular genres. After a copious introduction ('Cosmographical Novelties: Unravelling the Dialectical Fabric of French Prose', pp. 1–36), the first chapter ('Dialectic and Natural Philosophy: An Early Modern Panorama' pp. 37–97) outlines the history of dialectic—'the art of debating about probable issues' (p. 38), according to Aristotle—and its links with natural philosophy, the study of the heavens, from antiquity to the sixteenth century. It also explores the loci—or argument structures—used to construct a probable demonstration, such as 'from similars', 'from testimony', and 'from description'. After this introductory chapter, the book is divided in two parts, Part I covering the cosmological ('Natural-Theological, Sceptical, and Revolutionary Subversions', Chapters 2 and 3) and the cosmographical novelties ('Inventing the New World and National Geographies', Chapters 4 to 6). All the texts quoted in French are carefully translated. Chapter 2 ('Natural Theology and Cosmological Novelties: The Huguenot Encyclopaedia and the Jesuit Miscellany', pp. 101–50) [End Page 221] focuses on a Protestant encyclopedia (Pierre de La Primaudaye's Troisième tome de l'Académie Françoise, 1590) and a Jesuit textbook (Étienne Binet's Essay des merveilles de nature et des plus nobles artifices, 1621), highlighting in particular how the use of the loci 'from similars' and 'from authority' informed the discussion of novelties about the heavens. Chapter 3 ('Cosmological Fictions: Sceptical and Revolutionary Uses of the Loci', pp. 151–207) examines Montaigne's Essais, ii. 12—the 'Apologie de Raimond Sebond' (written between 1572 and 1592)—and Descartes's heliocentric cosmological fable Le Monde, ou Traité de la lumière, written between 1630 and 1633. Garrod shows how both thinkers, while openly critiquing dialectic and condemning 'the excessive reliance on arguments "from authority" though in different ways' (p. 153), still rely on the use of rhetorical loci in their essays in their efforts to comprehend the heavens. After these works dedicated to cosmology, the author turns to cosmography. Chapter 4 ('Early Modern Cosmography: Definitions and Tensions in Contemporary Scholarship', pp. 211–24) briefly offers some background, clarifying for instance the terms 'cosmography', 'geography', and 'chorography'. Chapter 5 ('The Locus from Authority in Cosmography and Geography', pp. 225–57) and Chapter 6 ('Loci in Cosmography and Geography: Probable Disciplines. Defining Novelties, Inventing National Geographies', pp. 259–311) explore François de Belleforest's Cosmographie universelle de tout le monde (1575), 'a patriotic geographical summa' (p. 5), translated into French from Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia universalis (1550). Through a close study of text and illustrations, the author analyses the use of the loci 'from the parts' and 'from authority' as well as of 'from notation', and how they 'inform the debates of the cosmographical revolution in a variety of ways' (p. 310). She shows how Münster and Belleforest build a political 'consensus about national identity' (p. 260). The short conclusion ('Dialectical...