Newton: Poema

José Agostinho de MacedoProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.3
Word count
105K words
Chapters
11

Tags

Foreign Literature Modern Poetry CosmologyPhilosophical PoetryIntellectual EnlightenmentScientific ReasonWestern Thought

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Newton: Poema by José Agostinho de MacedoAuthor: Macedo, José Agostinho de, 1761-1831,Language: Portuguese, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Oct 8, 2008

Editor's review

Newton: Poema is a long poem on Newton by the Portuguese poet José Agostinho de Macedo, belonging to the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Portuguese tradition of poetry on scientific themes. Its value lies not in popularizing Newtonian physics but in showing how an Enlightenment-era poet carried scientific ideas in classical verse; readers can observe the rhetorical strategies and period tastes at work when scientific discourse enters literary expression. Because the original is in Portuguese and the verse language carries classical meter and allusion, the barrier to entry is high, and it is better suited to research on Portuguese literature, Enlightenment scientific poetry, or the intersection of the history of science and literature. For general Chinese-language readers, reading the original directly is difficult; a translation or relevant scholarship is recommended alongside it. Those seeking only an account of Newton's life and scientific achievements will not find this book a suitable entry point.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with Macedo's life and the background of Portuguese Enlightenment literature before turning to the poem itself.
  2. Read alongside accounts of Newton's life and the history of science, and examine how the poem handles science and imagination.
  3. If Portuguese is limited, work through the text in sections with a translation or relevant research articles.
  4. Note the allusions and scientific imagery as material for analyzing the rhetoric of Enlightenment scientific poetry.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11

FAQ

Is this book a scientific biography of Newton? No. It is a Portuguese long poem on Newton, focused on literary expression and period ideas rather than a systematic account of Newton's physics. Readers wanting a scientific biography should choose a popular-science or biographical work instead.
Can I read this book without knowing Portuguese? Reading the original directly is quite difficult. The verse language includes classical meter and allusion; a translation, bilingual edition, or relevant scholarship is recommended to aid understanding, otherwise the details of the text are hard to grasp.
Is this book suitable for understanding the Enlightenment? It can serve as supplementary material. It shows how an Enlightenment-era poet handled scientific themes in classical verse, but it should be read alongside historical, philosophical, and history-of-science sources; the book alone cannot provide a systematic understanding.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

José Agostinho de Macedo Author · Portuguese · 1761–1831

José Agostinho de Macedo (1761–1831) was a Portuguese poet, preacher, and political writer born in Beja. Originally an Augustinian friar, he later obtained permission to leave the order and from 1802 served as a royal preacher, a role that gave his writing both a religious rhetoric and a public polemical character. His works span didactic poetry, epic, satire, and sermons, and often centre on the conflict between reason, faith, and the intellectual currents of his age: the didactic poem Newton discusses science and natural philosophy in verse, the epic Oriente is grand in scale, the satirical poem O Burro is sharp in tone, and the sermon against the philosophy of the nineteenth century intervenes directly in contemporary intellectual debate. Macedo's style is declamatory and expansive, fond of exaggeration and satire, and strongly argumentative; he was a prominent figure in the Portuguese literary world of his time. Public information is limited, and the details of his life and the overall assessment of his work remain to be further studied.