SOURCE: “Cyrano de Bergerac's Epistemological Bodies: ‘Pregnant with a Thousand Definitions’,” in Science-Fiction Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3, November 1998, pp. 413-32.

In the following essay, Romanowski argues that Cyrano joined together elements of both materialist and hermetic philosophy in L'Autre Monde.

1. Cyrano's Fiction in Context: Competing Sciences at the Dawn of the Modern Scientific Age.

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) wrote two highly imaginative texts of cosmic exploration and travel which defy all attempts at classification. Sometimes collectively entitled L'Autre Monde [The Other World], L'Autre Monde ou Les Estats et Empires de la Lune [The Other World, or the States and Empires of the Moon] and Les Estats et Empires du Soleil [The States and Empires of the Sun],¹ they have been the object of debate and widely differing interpretations. They have been considered as critical and satirical (Mason), libertine (Chambers, DeJean, Spink), materialist and epicurian (Alcover, Laugaa), and hermetist (Gossiaux...