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Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics by S. K. Heninger, Jr is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics about?

The notion of a harmonious universe is one of man’s most cherished beliefs. It was taught by Pythagoras as early as the sixth century B.C., and remained a basic premise in Western philosophy, science, and art almost to our own day. This book demonstrates the pervasiveness of this concept in the renaissance. The theory of cosmos, expressed as universal harmony or as a tetrad, was prominent in the period and strongly conditioned its esthetics. Unless we understand this, much of the meaning and beauty of Elizabethan poetry will be lost. The universe as conceived by Pythagoras was carefully constructed. Our earth stood fixed at the center. Ranging outward from it were the spheres of the planets, with the sun as the midmost of seven. Beyond them shone the stars, distributed around the underside of a single delimiting sphere. And outside all, secure in an unchanging empyrean, reigned a benevolent God. Throughout His creation the pattern of the tetrad persisted, so that there were four elements, four seasons, four humours, four ages of man. The traditional sciences taught in the universities—mathematics, music, geometry, and astronomy—derived from a study of these cosmic arrangements.

Who reads Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics?

Author

S. K. Heninger, Jr

Publisher

The Huntington Library

Published

1974

Language

EN

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Literary Fiction, Philosophy, History