Hemispheres and Stratospheres: The Idea and Experience of Distance in the International Enlightenment (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850)

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.
 

KEVIN L. COPE is Adams Professor of English Literature and a member of the comparative literature faculty at Louisiana State University. Among his many books and edited collections are Criteria of Certainty, John Locke Revisited, and In and After the Beginning. He is also editor of the annual journal 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era.