La découverte d’un autre monde : fiction et théorie dans les œuvres de John Wilkins et de Francis Godwin

Abstract

The Man in the Moone by Francis Godwin and A Discovery of a New World in the Moone by John Wilkins both appeared in England in 1638. The former offers a fanciful tale of the lunar voyage of Domingo Gonsales; the latter systematically discusses the plausibility of such a voyage. This article calls into question the distinction between fiction and theory, which these two texts might appear, respectively, to represent, by showing how moon travel contributes to the blurring of these lines. Rather than the inadequate distinction between fiction and theory, we propose the use of the modalities defined by the texts themselves: the possible and the probable. These new categories lead us to re-evaluate the narrative and theoretical treatment of lunar travel. Scientific discourse increasingly includes fiction in the form of hypotheses and fiction incorporates scientific elements to the extent that it participates in the debates on astronomy.