How to Construct a Poem: Descartes, Sidney
Name
Raman-Geometry.pdf
Description
Earlier version of published article, please only cite published version.
Size
250.89 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0dfe17e921fcb7bd0fc9d6fd0b09bc72
Author(s)
Raman, Shankar
Date Issued
2013
Journal
Formal Matters: Reading the Materials of the English Renaissance
Publisher
Manchester University Press
Citation
Raman, Shankar. "How to Construct a Poem: Descartes, Sidney." Formal Matters: Reading the Materials of the English Renaissance, ed. by Alison Deutermann and Andras Kisery, Manchester University Press, 2013 © 2013 Manchester University Press
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
This essay explores the intimate bond in early modern Europe between the premier science of forms, geometry, and the premier art of forms, poetry. The connections between these (at least for us) seemingly disparate domains become especially evident in how geometry and poetry re-envisage the relationship of form to content, of the shapes they invent to the matters that constitute their specific concerns. I shall be seeking here
to identify parallels that bespeak a broader, shared cultural response across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to an inherited Greek tradition, strongly marked by Aristotelian thought, in which what Sir Philip Sidney would later call the relation of “manner” to “matter” played a fundamental role. My argument places Rene Descartes alongside Sidney as two of the key figures whose contributions to the theory and practice of mathematics and poetry respectively reveal with especial vividness both the nature of this response and its implications for early modern selves and the worlds they sought to make.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719085536/
