Recognizing distance as a central concern of the Enlightenment, this volume offers eight essays on distance in art and literature; on cultural transmission and exchange over distance; and on distance as a topic in science, a theme in literature, and a central issue in modern research methods. Through studies of landscape gardens, architecture, imaginary voyages, transcontinental philosophical exchange, and cosmological poetry, Hemispheres and Stratospheres unfurls the early history of a distance culture that influences our own era of global information exchange, long-haul flights, colossal skyscrapers, and space tourism.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Part I: Best Seen at a Distance: The Art of the Far Away
Looking Down: Observations on Elevation, Prospect Vision, and Eighteenth-Century Imagination
Roger D. Lund
Space and the Meaning of Distance in Bernardo Vittone’s Architecture
William Stargard
Change of Air, Change of Self: Long Distance and Human Adaptability in Imaginary Voyages of the Long Eighteenth Century
Bärbel Czennia
Part II: Culture Over and As Distance
Distant Lands, Distant Races, Distant Cultures: Two Eighteenth-Century South Indian Priests Go to Europe
Brijraj Singh
Connecting Hemispheres, Playing with Distance: Rammohun Roy, an Indian Transnationalist
Chandrava Chakravarty
Part III: The Nature of Distance
New Science, Distant Reading, and Distance as Intersubjectivity
Rachel Mann
Orbiting Iambs: Enlightenment Cosmology and Conveniently Condensed Immensities
Kevin L. Cope
Journeys to the Edge: The Idea and Experience of Distance in Archival Research
Phyllis Thompson
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index