Literary Knowledge (1890-1950): Popular Astronomy

Fascination for astronomical phenomena ran wide in the modernist period. While new technologies and media crazed public fascination, modern literature continued its ancient role, leading back as far as Hesiod, in mediating astronomical knowledge and expanding the powers of imagining the cosmos. Bestselling novels by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells or Kurd Lasswitz are the most well-known examples, yet a much greater variety of fiction that mediated and disseminated cosmological knowledge existed. From short stories in magazines and newspapers to epic narratives and tragedy, literature communicated ideas about astronomy in the form of adventure stories, detective fiction, mystery novels, romances, or historical novels. This doctoral research project will study a representative selection of fiction that deals with astronomical phenomena, in particular stories published in popular magazines and journals in Britain and Germany (such as Das Neue Universum, Boy’s Own Paper, Bibliothek der Unterhaltung und des Wissens and Pearson's Magazine). Its aim is to come to terms with the breadth in genres and narrative conventions (such as plot, characters, narrative structure, temporal sequencing, generic norms) and chart the cosmological models that circulated. The – often massively read - texts in this corpus addressed readers of different generations, classes and genders, and their authors and editors held different ideological, religious or political views. The project will investigate how and why (in political terms) astronomical findings or conceptions of the cosmos were absorbed in literature and as such it will fathom the role of popular fiction in the dissemination of knowledge.