In today’s academe, the fields of science and literature are considered unconnected, one relying on raw data and fact, the other focusing on fiction. During the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, however, the two fields were not so distinct. Just as the natural philosophers of the era were discovering in and adopting from literature new strategies and techniques for their discourse, so too were poets and storytellers finding inspiration in natural philosophy, particularly in astronomy.             A work that speaks to the history of science and literary studies, Fictions of the Cosmos explores the evolving relationship that ensued between fiction and astronomical authority. By examining writings of Kepler, Godwin, Hooke, Cyrano, Cavendish, Fontenelle, and others, Frédérique Aït-Touati shows that it was through the telling of stories—such as through accounts of celestial journeys—that the Copernican hypothesis, for example, found an ontological weight that its geometric models did not provide. Aït-Touati draws from both cosmological treatises and fictions of travel and knowledge, as well as personal correspondences, drawings, and instruments, to emphasize the multiple borrowings between scientific and literary discourses. This volume sheds new light on the practices of scientific invention, experimentation, and hypothesis formation by situating them according to their fictional or factual tendencies.   “Aït-Touati’s arguments are adroit and ingenious. . . . Fictions of the Cosmos makes a persuasive case for the intertwining of science and literature in the seventeenth century.” -- Lawrence Lipking ― New Republic “This welcome translation . . . makes available in English a smartly learned study of texts involving lunar journeying, works in Latin, French, and English by, among others, Kepler, Galileo, Fontenelle, Huygens, Hooke, and Cavendish. . . . The volume will prove tonic for literary and scientific historians. . . . Highly recommended.” -- E. D. Hill, Mount Holyoke College ― Choice “Any student of literature and astronomy in the seventeenth century will need to consult Fictions of the cosmos, including its bibliography.” -- Dennis Danielson, University of British Columbia ― Journal for the History of Astronomy “[T]his splendid study offers a serious investigation of not just the common territory and shared strategies of what we would now term ‘science’ and ‘literature,’ but also of their inevitable efforts to distinguish themselves as autonomous discourses.” -- Eileen Reeves, Princeton University ― Studies in History and Philosophy of Science “Aït-Touati’s book will no doubt open up a treasure trove of seminal ideas about the relationship between literature and science that will considerably enrich their knowledge and appreciation.” -- Anthony J. DeSantis, University of South Florida ― HOPOS “[A] fascinating look at the seventeenth century in ways that will reveal new insights, even for scholars of the period.” ― Sun News Network “Aït-Touati raises profound theoretical issues for literary scholars in particular, including, of course, literary scholars of the seventeenth century. . . . This book will be much discussed in years to come.” -- Elena Levy-Navarro, University of Wisconsin–Whitewater ― Seventeenth-Century News “A book as sweeping as the epic journeys from earth to moon and beyond that it traces from antiquity to the scientific revolution. . . . Fictions of the Cosmos is . . . a subtle literary history of a forgotten genre and a risk-taking, ambitious exercise in the history of science, one that sets out not simply to describe a paradigm shift in astronomical thinking but to sketch a revolution in the status of ‘fiction’ itself.” -- Henry S. Turner, Rutgers University ― Configurations “Fictions of the Cosmos makes an important contribution to the study of early modern science and literature by attending to the role of rhetoric in shaping the language and forms of scientific discourse as distinct from the ‘literary’ genres to which it was once closely related. Like Kepler’s lunar voyager, the reader of her book is transported to another world—that of seventeenth-century cosmology—in order to see both that world and the modern one with fresh eyes.” -- Jayne Elizabeth Archer, Aberystwith University ― British Society for Literature and Science “[D]eftly nuanced and finely controlled. . . . Fictions of the Cosmos is a model work for future interdisciplinary scholarship and a fascinating look into a period when scientific and literary imaginations formatively drew inspiration from the same sources as well as from each other.” ― MAKE “Many scientists fear that the association of the words ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ weakens their claims to objectivity. They tend to forget that science and literature had to drink at the same sources long before they began to part company and started to pit imagination against reality. Only by going back to the