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Loading... Voyage to the Moon (1657)by Cyrano de Bergerac
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. 8479690488 A different translation, of the same story (Voyages to the Moon and the Sun) but with a few illustrations from an earlier publication, and without the Voyage to the Sun. Just as fun, but slightly harder to read (than the excellent Folio Society edition) with the occasional OCR misprint, but made up by excellent footnotes and biography. Despite its appeal as one of the earliest books regarding travel to the moon, I found this work a difficult read. The book did contain some interesting notions, including arguably an early version of rocketry and recognition that the Earth spins on its axis. Unfortunately, on the whole the science fiction was far more fiction than science. Further, while some of the author's philosophical digressions were interesting and sometimes humorous, too many others were tedious and stilted. no reviews | add a review
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What if the moon were another world for which ours served as the moon? An absurd notion, but one which leads our narrator to travel to a paradisiacal world in which he is a monster, a malfunction of nature, and a myth. The dream quickly becomes a nightmare, however, when the ruling ecclesiastical courts condemn him for his heretical opinions and illicit beliefs. As viewed from the moon, the philosophical, scientific, anthropocentric, and religious certitudes that reign on Earth seem trivial. This masterpiece of Libertine literature emerges as an unprecedented example of relativization and a scathing attack on the values and institutions of 18th-century French society. The real-life Cyrano de Bergerac (1619#150;1655), made famous by Edmond Rostand, was a dramatist and poet; in his prose works, he shows himself to be the forerunner to Jules Verne and Johannes Kepler. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)843.4Literature French French fiction Classic period 1600–1715LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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