Poetic Cosmos

Poetic Cosmos is a subproject in the research programme Literary Knowledge (1890-1950): Modernisms and the Sciences in Europe. This project investigates how cosmological findings shaped the representation of the Universe in literature. The modernist period is considered to be the “golden age of cosmology” (North). Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity or George Lemaître’s theory of the expanding Universe, among others, marked a turning point in the age-old study of the cosmos. New cosmological findings sparked the imagination of all, not least that of writers. Avant-Garde writers not only responded to a new cosmology but also prefigured new insights in theoretical physics and cosmology. While these authors’ work has frequently been related to the newest cosmological discoveries, this project investigates how highbrow modernist and avant-garde literary projections of the cosmos’ origin drew on older cosmological models. The project therefore focuses on poetic cosmogonies. Coming from the Greek words kosmos and genesis, cosmogonies are models of explanations for the creation of the universe. This project analyzes how poets imagined and represented the origin of all things in a never ending Universe, in part by taking recourse to older rhetorical and poetic modes.