Abstract

VILLANUEVA NORIEGA, Gabriela. Weaving the New Science with the Materials of the Imagination: Margaret Cavendish, Poetry and Experimentation. Acta poét [online]. 2023, vol.44, n.2, pp.22-43.  Epub Aug 21, 2023. ISSN 2448-735X.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.ap.2023.2/100x26s472.

Despite the reticence against the participation of women in intellectual spheres, several among them engaged actively in the debates around the New Science during the seventeenth century. Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) is one of the most singular figures of her time, in that she did not receive a formal education in philosophy, and yet, by means of a prolific and extravagant outpour, she experimented with a diversity of literary styles and placed her bets on the generic interbreeding of texts. Although Cavendish’s works have often been studied by dividing the creative and literary works from the philosophical ones, reading them side by side seems crucial to understand the role that fancy and poetic imagination plays in the development of her natural philosophy. This paper examines fragments from Poems and Fancies (1653) to assess the role of fancy and imagination in connection to the philosophical ideas of Cavendish.

Keywords : Natural philosophy; Fancy and Imagination; Women in Science; Atomism; History of Science.