Francis Godwin

Domingo Gonsales is a redirect to this article. For other people, see Domingo González .

Francis Godwin

Francis Godwin (* 1562 in Hannington, Northamptonshire , † after April 29, 1633 in Whitbourne, Herefordshire ) was an English clergyman and writer.

Life

He was the son of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Thomas Godwin. From 1578 he was a "student" at Christ Church College, where he obtained his bachelor's degree in 1580 and his master's degree three years later . In 1587 he was appointed Sub-Dean of Exeter . In 1593 he made his Bachelor of Divinity and in 1595 finally obtained his doctorate. In 1601 he published the Catalog of the Bishops of England since the first planting of the Christian - Religion in this Island , for which he was promoted to Bishop of Llandaff in the same year . In 1616 Godwin published the Rerum Anglicarum, Henrico VIII., Edwardo VI. el Maria regnantibus, Annales , which were later translated into English and published by his son.

Nowadays Godwin's (German: especially for the 1629 and 1638 resulting posthumously published novel "The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, by Domingo Gonsales, the Speedy Messenger" The Man in the Moon ) known. The main part of the novel describes in a first-person story by the Spaniard Domingo Gonsales his journey to the moon. Gonsales flies to the moon from Pico del Teide on Tenerife with a flying machine constructed on the island of Sankt Helena and drawn by specially trained “gansas” - a type of swans or geese . After a long stint in the lunar world he lands in returning accidentally in China and is used by members of the local Jesuit prompted mission to write down his experiences.

After its first publication, the work was printed in eight further English editions by 1768. Shortly after it was first published, an anonymous Dutch translation appeared in the 1640s, which was followed by at least four other Dutch prints by 1718. A French translation by Jean Baudoin appeared in 1648 (with further editions in 1651, 1666 and 1671). The French translation of Baudoin in turn formed the template for the German translation The flying wanderer after the moon , which most likely comes from Balthasar Venator and first appeared in 1659 (in further editions 1660, 1667, 1684, 1699, 1701). The third German edition, published in Nuremberg in 1667, was accompanied by an extract and an appendix , which probably came from Grimmelshausen , to fill the last printed sheet . Without these ingredients, but together with two other satires by Venator, The Flying Wanderer was then included in 1684 as the supposed work of Grimmelshausen in the third part of the posthumous complete edition of Grimmelshausen. This incorrect attribution made the work a long-term success in Germany and was not corrected until 1924 by Grimmelshausen Research (Julie Cellarius).

Godwin's novel, which is now considered a forerunner of science fiction , is entertaining, but demanding in terms of content, designed to educate the reader and provide food for thought, and is in line with its time in philosophical and scientific questions. Not only did he inspire related writers such as Jonathan Swift ( Gulliver's voyage to Laputa ) and Cyrano de Bergerac ( L'autre monde ), but he also found attention in the world of scholarship. The description of the lunar language based on musical tones was discussed by John Wilkins and Andreas Müller von Greifenhagen in the context of contemporary linguistic questions. Gonsalo's aircraft was discussed by Wilkins, David Russen and others from the point of view of its technical suitability and prompted Johann Heinrich Zedler to remark, apparently intended as a warning, that no one would be “so simple-minded” as to turn this “poem into a true story”. The assertion that some bird species spent the winter as migratory birds on the moon was accepted as a serious possibility by Charles Morton ( An Essay towards the Probable Solution of this Question , 1694) and other authors until the 18th century.

Another book by Godwin, the Nuncius inanimatus, published in Utopia of 1629, appears to have been the model for John Wilkins' Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger of 1641.

literature

• Anke Janssen: Francis Godwin's "The Man in the Moone" - The discovery of the novel as a medium for dealing with time problems , Verlag Peter D.Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1981. ISBN 3-8204-5861-1 .
• Anke Janssen: Effect of a novel as a source of inspiration: Francis Godwin's "The Man in the Moone" . In: Arcadia 20.1 (1985), pp. 20-46

Web links

• Literature by and about Francis Godwin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Francis Godwin in VD 17 .
• Francis Godwin: The flying wanderer to the moon: Or a very short and strange description of the New World of the moon. as described by a born Spaniard named Dominico Gonsales: and made known to posterity; Translated from French into German ..... Stern, Wolffenbüttel 1659
• The Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy and Space Flight
• Concept of weightlessness (Engl.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Further information in Lemma Grimmelshausen - As a translator
2. ^ Lunar journey. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 21, Leipzig 1739, column 1100-1103 (here column 1101).