
Heavenly Discourses
Myth, Astronomy and Culture
Edited by Nicholas Campion
ISBN: 978-1-907767-07-4
£26.99 - £39.99
6 Sept 2016
Paperback, ebook; 410 pages
Life on Earth would not exist without the brilliant objects we see in it; we would not be here without the light and heat of the Sun, and the rhythmic, tidal, biologically-vital, influences of the Moon. From earliest recorded history and in all societies the stars and planets, indeed the entire sky, have been a source of meaning for human affairs. In many cultures the heavenly bodies speak to humanity and, often, humanity talks back. Sometimes the stars speak for themselves as divine entities. In much western art and literature they become metaphors, underpinning narratives – and discourses – which explore or dramatise the human condition, as in the epic narratives of modern, cinematic science fiction. And for millennia human beings have imagined a journey to the heavens. This dream finally became a reality on 12 April 1961 when Yuri Gagarin made his single, historic orbit of the Earth. This date inaugurated the period of human space travel, and has a claim to be one of the most significant moments of human history.
The Heavenly Discourses conference was a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Gagarin’s achievement, held at the University of Bristol and sponsored by the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. This volume brings together selected papers from that conference and provides a valuable resource in the emerging discipline of Cultural Astronomy.
Categories
Conference, Myth, Culture
Tags
Nicholas Campion, Celestial, Astronomy, Astrology
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Contents
Images
Acknowledgements
A Letter of Welcome:
Yuri Gagarin Russian State Scientific Research and Experimental Cosmonaut Training Centre
Introduction: Discourse with the Heavens
~ Nicholas Campion
On the Exhibition
~ Darrelyn Gunzburg
Exhibition Catalogue
About the Sophia Centre
Contributors
Part One: Heavenly Discourses
Into the Blue: Transcendantal Access and Celestial Ascent
~ E.C. Krupp
The Ancient Mithraeum as a Model Universe, Part 1
~ Roger Beck
Under a Star-Spangled Banner: Politics and Astral Religion in the Roman Empire
~ Shannon Grimes
Celestial Vaults in English Gothic Architecture
~ John Hendrix
They Were Like Them: The Stars in Mesoamerican Imagery
~ Stanisław Iwaniszewski
Three Russian Cosmists: Fedorov, Tsiolkovsky, Chizhevsky
~ George M. Young
Part Two: Discourses In Words
Man, Mystery, Myth and Metaphor: Poetry and the Heavens
~ Gillian Clarke
The Stars’ Earthly Mirror: Heavenly Inversions in the Oresteia of Aeschylus
~ Ben Pestell
Travelling the Cosmos: Celestial Journeys in the Japanese Stories of ‘Urashima Taro’ and ‘Night of the Milky Way Railroad’
~ Steven L. Renshaw
Space for Uncertainty: The Movement of Celestial Bodies in the Exeter Book of Riddles
~ Jennifer Neville
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy as a Refernce Point for Federici Zuccari’s Later Oeuvre (1575-1607)
~ Simone Westermann
Celestial Bodies in the Writings of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499
~ Valery Rees
The Heavens and King Lear
~ Nick Davis
Spiritual Symbolism in W.B. Yeats’s ‘The Phases of the Moon’
~ Faisal A.W. Hayder Al-Doori
Septentrion: Ursa Major in the Fin de Siècle
~ Leon Burnett
To the Stars and Back: The Influence of Manned Space Flight on Soviet Science Fiction
~ Natalia Karakulina
Interstellar Messaging: An Embodied Perspective
~ Carrie Paterson
Fictional Explorations of Astronomy: How to Reach the Parts Other Narratives Miss
~ Pippa Goldschmidt
Part Three: Discourses In Sound
Heavenly Discourses: Myth, Astronomy and Culture
~ June Boyce-Tillman
Astrosonic Edutainment: Or, Tales from a Dark Sky Park
~ Chris Dooks
Part Four: Discourses In Images
Seeing Earth: Transformational Representations of the Universe in the Stars
~ Jürgen Heinrichs
Astronomy and Cosmology in Byzantine Art: Bringing Byzantine Art into the Twenty-First Century
~ Valerie Shrimplin
Giorgio Vasari’s ‘Sala Degli Elementi’ in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence: The Symbolism of Saturn as Heavenly Air
~ Liana De Girolami Cheney
Holbein’s Horizons: The Cosmos of a German Artist in the Age of the Reformation
~ Jennifer A. Morris
Lost World: Images of Mars Before the Space Age
~ Clive Davenhall
Cosmic Stutters: Anselm Kiefer’sSearch for Redemption in the Stars
~ John G. Hatch
Melancholy and Beauty in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine and Julia Kristeva’s Black Sun
~ Ruth McPhee
Illustrated Sky: Contemporary Depictions of the Classical Constellations
~ Melanie Schlossberg
The Cosmos from Outside: Views of the World and Cognitive Cobwebs
~ Michael Hoepfel
Ethical Implications of Astrophotography and Stargazing
~ Dietmar Hager
Revealing a Universe of Colour
~ David Malin
Index

About the Editor
Dr Nicholas Campion is Principal Lecturer, Institute of Education and Humanities, and Associate Professor in Cosmology and Culture. He is the director of the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, the only academic Centre in the world to deal with cultural relationships with the sky and the cosmos. He is responsible for taking forward the Centre’s research and teaching activities, through supervising PhD students, sponsoring research projects, organising conferences and other events, and publishing research via the peer-reviewed journal Culture and Cosmos. He also serves as Programme Director of the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology.