Science, Literature and Rhetoric in Early Modern England

Juliet Cummins is Honorary Research Advisor in the English Department at the University of Queensland, Australia. David Burchell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.

Contents: Introduction; 'The fashioned image of poetry or the regular instruction of philosophy'? Truth utility and the natural sciences in early modern England, Peter Harrison; Mapping regeneration in The Winter's Tale, Anne Sutherland; 'A plain blunt man': Hobbes, science and rhetoric revisited, David Burchell; Reformed catechism and scientific method in Milton's Of Education and Paradise Lost, Angelica Duran; Rewriting the revolution: Milton, Bacon and the Royal Society rhetoricians, Catherine Gimelli Martin; A philosophical duchess: understanding Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society, Peter Dear; Literary responses to Robert Boyle's Natural Philosophy, Peter Anstey; Milton's Chaos in Pope's London, Sophie Gee; Global analogies: cosmology, geosymmetry and skepticism in some works of Aphra Benn, Robert Markley; Bibliography; Index.