The celestial journey and the harmony of the spheres in English literature, 1300-1700

Abstract

The Celestial Journey, as a specific type of dream vision, pervades much of English literature, especially between 1300 and 1700. The concept of the Harmony of the Spheres Is usually Inseparable from the celestial Journey and forms its focus. The Harmony of the Spheres has its origin in the theories of the geocentric cosmology and in the philosophy of the Platonists, Neoplatonists, and early Christian mystics. Basic to the expression in literature of these two interrelated Ideas have been the myths of Er, Pompey, and Scipio as they were told by Plato, Lucan, and Cicero. The idea of harmony extended from the musical relationship among the spheres to a philosophical harmony among the parts of the universe and within man as a microcosm. The two concepts are prominent in the works of Chaucer where they present varied aspects of harmonious life and wisdom. Shakespeare developed the ideas in a variety of ways in several of his plays, especially with respect to harmony as order. Milton expressed through them the relationships between God and His universe, broken by man's sin, to be re-established by the coming of Christ's kingdom on earth. During most of the seventeenth century, the celestial journey tended to become a journey of the soul toward God In the exercise of contemplation, and the Harmony of the Spheres was expressed as a metaphor of the process of purification of the soul in ecstasy. For Dryden, the harmony as the creating power of God was responsible for the universe and reached its fullest expression In God's creation of man himself. The entire concept, then, is formed about a universe of creation in which God is the center toward which all members of the creation are directed.