The Knowable and the Unknowable: Modern Science, Nonclassical Thought, and the "Two Cultures" (Studies in Literature and Science) - Softcover

Plotnitsky, Arkady

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472067974 ISBN 13: 9780472067978

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2002

Synopsis

In September 1666, a fire sparked in a bakery on Pudding Lane grew until it had destroyed four-fifths of central London. The rebuilding efforts that followed not only launched the careers of some of London’s most famous architects, but also transformed Londoners’ relationship to their city by underscoring the ways that people could shape a city’s spaces—and the ways that a city’s spaces could shape its people. Movable Londons looks to the Restoration theater to understand how the dispossessed made London into a modern city after the Great Fire of 1666 and how the introduction of changeable scenery in theaters altered how Londoners conceptualized the city. Fawcett makes a claim for the centrality of unplanned spaces and the role of the Restoration theater in articulating those spaces as the modern city emerged and argues that movable scenery revolutionized London’s public theaters, inviting audiences to observe how the performers—many of them hailing from the same communities as their characters—navigated the stage.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472067974
• ISBN 13: 9780472067978
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344