Encounter between literature and science: Galileo’s impact on Milton

Abstract

The relationship between literature and science finds its roots in the Renaissance, with the widely acknowledged literary quality of works such as Galileo’s, extending to novels of today such as Ian McEwan’s Solar, Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder and Daniel Kehlmann’s Vermessung der Welt. Here, I will focus on the influence that one of the greatest scientists of all times had on John Milton, when writing his Paradise Lost. Albert Einstein, in his Foreword to Galileo’s Dialogo sopra i massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) writes about its author that:

His unusual literary gift enables him to address the educated men of his age in such clear and impressive language as to overcome the anthropocentric and mythical thinking of his contemporaries and to lead them back to an objective and casual attitude towards the cosmos, an attitude which had been lost to humanity with the decline of Greek culture. (Galilei, 2001: xxiii)