Comparing Title Pages:
a Renaissance pamplet attacking superstition
and a Renaissance Fortune-teller's pamphlet
Now look at the title page of John Melton's Astrologaster (1620). Have you ever read the contemporary magazine The Skeptical Inquirer? Melton's "penny pamphlet" (as
Samuel Pepys, from whose collection of such items this comes, called them) is like that magazine in many ways--aiming to debunk superstitious beliefs and behaviors. Note again the small Latin epigraph, from Cicero's writings. Isn't it interesting how the proponents of empiricism were also trained in classical literature. (English majors: there's hope!)
Wouldn't you also like to arraign the purveyors of nonsense in our own time? We'll be reading
Christopher Marlowe's play Dr. Faustus this term. Notice how the figure-caster looks like the title page of Dr. Faustus, a copy of which (in its entirety) I'll give you when we read it. He's holding in his hand an astrolabe. Here's a definition of that term: "n. A medieval instrument, now replaced by the sextant, that was once used to determine the altitude of the sun or other celestial bodies. [Middle English astrelabie, from Old French astrelabe, from Medieval Latin astrolabium, from Greek astrolabon, planisphere : astro-, astro- + lambanein, lab-, to take.] (As usual, the def. is from my American Heritage Dictionary.)
Now look at "Lady Eleanor Audeley's" (did she exist??) Strange and Wonderfull Prophesies:
Okay! You get the idea about some of the tensions between empiricism and traditional world views in the Renaissance. Now, click here to turn to a
selection of title pages of "Classical" English Renaissance publications.