The Man in the Moone

Clockwise, from top left: Copernicus, Gilbert, Kepler, Galileo

Godwin's book appeared in a time of great interest in the Moon and astronomical phenomena, and of important developments in celestial observation, mathematics and mechanics. The influence particularly of Nicolaus Copernicus led to what was called the "new astronomy"; Copernicus is the only astronomer Godwin mentions by name, but the theories of Johannes Kepler and William Gilbert are also discernible.[1] Galileo Galilei's 1610 publication Sidereus Nuncius (usually translated as "The Sidereal Messenger") had a great influence on Godwin's astronomical theories, although Godwin proposes (unlike Galileo) that the dark spots on the Moon are seas, one of many similarities between The Man in the Moone and Kepler's Somnium sive opus posthumum de astronomia lunaris of 1634 ("The Dream, or Posthumous Work on Lunar Astronomy").[1]

Speculation on lunar habitation was nothing new in Western thought, but it intensified in England during the early 17th century: Philemon Holland's 1603 translation of Plutarch's Moralia introduced Greco-Roman speculation to the English vernacular, and poets including Edmund Spenser proposed that other worlds, including the Moon, could be inhabited. Such speculation was prompted also by the expanding geographical view of the world. The 1630s saw the publication of a translation of Lucian's True History (1634), containing two accounts of trips to the Moon, and a new edition of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, likewise featuring an ascent to the Moon. In both books the Moon is inhabited, and this theme was given an explicit religious importance by writers such as John Donne, who in Ignatius His Conclave (1611, with new editions in 1634 and 1635) satirised a "lunatic church" on the Moon founded by Lucifer and the Jesuits. Lunar speculation reached an acme at the end of the decade, with the publication of Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638) and John Wilkins's The Discovery of a World in the Moone (also 1638, and revised in 1640).[5]

Frontispiece and title page of the second edition (1657), now with the pseudonym replaced by "F.G. B. of H." ("Francis Godwin, Bishop of Hereford")

Until Grant McColley, a historian of early Modern English literature, published his "The Date of Godwin's Domingo Gonsales" in 1937, it was thought that Godwin wrote The Man in the Moone relatively early in his life – perhaps during his time at Christ Church from 1578 to 1584, or maybe even as late as 1603. But McColley proposed a much later date of 1627 or 1628, based on internal and biographical evidence.[6] A number of ideas about the physical properties of the Earth and the Moon, including claims about "a secret property that operates in a manner similar to that of a loadstone attracting iron", did not appear until after 1620. And Godwin seems to borrow the concept of using a flock of strong, trained birds to fly Gonsales to the Moon from Francis Bacon's Sylva sylvarum ("Natural History"), published in July 1626. All this evidence supports McColley's dating of "1626–29, with the probable years of composition 1627–28", which is now generally accepted.[7][6]

William Poole, in his 2009 edition of The Man in the Moone, provides additional evidence for a later dating. Godwin, he argues, most likely got his knowledge of the Jesuit mission in China (founded in 1601) from a 1625 edition of Samuel Purchas's Purchas his Pilgrimage. This book contains a redaction from Nicolas Trigault's De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu (1615) ("Concerning the Christian expedition to China undertaken by the Society of Jesus"), itself the redaction of a manuscript by the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci.[8] Poole also sees the influence of Robert Burton, who in the second volume of The Anatomy of Melancholy had speculated on gaining astronomical knowledge through telescopic observation (citing Galileo) or from space travel (Lucian). Appearing for the first time in the 1628 edition of the Anatomy is a section on planetary periods, which gives a period for Mars of three years – had Godwin used William Gilbert's De Magnete (1600) for this detail he would have found a Martian period of two years.[9] Finally, Poole points to what he calls a "genetic debt": while details on for instance the Martian period could have come from a few other sources, Burton and Godwin are the only two writers of the time to combine an interest in alien life with the green children of Woolpit, from a 12th-century account of two mysterious green children found in Suffolk.[10]

One of Godwin's "major intellectual debts" is to Gilbert's De Magnete, in which Gilbert argued that the Earth was magnetic,[11] though he may have used a derivative account by Mark Ridley or a geographical textbook by Nathanael Carpenter.[12] It is unlikely that Godwin could have gathered first-hand evidence used in narrating the events in his book (such as the details of Gonsales's journey back from the East, especially a description of Saint Helena and its importance as a resting place for sick mariners), and more likely that he relied on travel adventures and other books.[7] He used Trigault's De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas (1615), based on a manuscript by Matteo Ricci, the founder of the Jesuit mission in Beijing in 1601, for information about that mission. Details pertaining to the sea voyage and Saint Helena likely came from Thomas Cavendish's account of his circumnavigation of the world, available in Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1599–1600) and in Purchas His Pilgrimage, first published in 1613.[7] Information on the Dutch Revolt, the historical setting for the early part of Gonsales' career, likely came from the annals of Emanuel van Meteren, a Dutch historian working in London.[13]

Frontispiece of Der Fliegende Wandersmann nach dem Mond, 1659

McColley knew of only one surviving copy of the first edition, held at the British Museum[6] (now British Library C.56.c.2), which was the basis for his 1937 edition of The Man in the Moone and Nuncius Inanimatus, an edition criticised by literary critic Kathleen Tillotson as lacking in textual care and consistency.[14] H. W. Lawton's review published six years earlier mentions a second copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, V.20973 (now RES P- V- 752 (6)), an omission also noted by Tillotson.[15]

For the text of his 2009 edition, William Poole collated a copy in the Bodleian Library Oxford (Ashm. 940(1)) with that in the British Library.[16] The printer of the first edition of The Man in the Moone is identified on the title page as John Norton, and the book was sold by Joshua Kirton and Thomas Warren. It also includes an epistle introducing the work and attributed to "E. M.", perhaps the fictitious Edward Mahon identified in the Stationers' Register as the translator from the original Spanish.[17] Poole speculates that this Edward Mahon might be Thomas or Morgan Godwin, two of the bishop's sons who had worked with their father on telegraphy,[18] but adds that Godwin's third son, Paul, might be involved as well. The partial revision of the manuscript (the first half has dates according to the Gregorian calendar, the second half still follows the superseded Julian calendar) indicates an unfinished manuscript, which Paul might have acquired after his father's death and passed on to his former colleague Joshua Kirton: Paul Godwin and Kirton were apprenticed to the same printer, John Bill, and worked there together for seven years. Paul may have simply continued the "E. M." hoax unknowingly, and/or may have been responsible for partial revision of the manuscript.[19] To the second edition, published in 1657, was added Godwin's Nuncius Inanimatus (in English and Latin; first published in 1629). The third edition was published in 1768; its text was abridged, and a description of St Helena (by printer Nathaniel Crouch[6][20]) functioned as an introduction.[15]

A French translation by Jean Baudoin, L'Homme dans la Lune, was published in 1648, and republished four more times.[lower-alpha 1] This French version excised the narrative's sections on Lunar Christianity, [22] as so do the many translations based on it,[23] including the German translation incorrectly ascribed[24] to Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, Der fliegende Wandersmann nach dem Mond, 1659.[lower-alpha 2] Johan van Brosterhuysen (c. 1594–1650) translated the book into Dutch,[26] and a Dutch translation – possibly Brosterhuysen's, although the attribution is uncertain[27] – went through seven printings in the Netherlands between 1645 and 1718. The second edition of 1651 and subsequent editions include a continuation of unknown authorship relating Gonsales' further adventures.[28][29][lower-alpha 3]

The story is set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a period of religious conflict in England. Not only was there the threat of a Catholic resurgence but there were also disputes within the Protestant Church. When Gonsales first encounters the Lunars he exclaims "Jesu Maria",[44] at which the Lunars fall to their knees, but although they revere the name of Jesus they are unfamiliar with the name Maria, suggesting that they are Protestants rather than Catholics;[45] Poole is of the same opinion: "their lack of reaction to the name of Mary suggests that they have not fallen into the errors of the Catholic Church, despite some otherwise rather Catholic-looking institutions on the moon".[22] Beginning in the 1580s, when Godwin was a student at Oxford University, many publications criticising the governance of the established Church of England circulated widely, until in 1586 censorship was introduced, resulting in the Martin Marprelate controversy. Martin Marprelate was the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the illegal tracts attacking the Church published between 1588 and 1589. A number of commentators, including Grant McColley, have suggested that Godwin strongly objected to the imposition of censorship, expressed in Gonsales's hope that the publication of his account may not prove "prejudicial to the Catholic faith".[45][46] John Clark has suggested that the Martin Marprelate controversy may have inspired Godwin to give the name Martin to the Lunars' god, but as a bishop of the Church of England it is perhaps unlikely that he was generally sympathetic to the Martin Marprelate position.[45] Critics do not agree on the precise denomination of Godwin's Lunars. In contrast with Clark and Poole, David Cressy argues that the Lunars falling to their knees after Gonsales's exclamation (a similar ritual takes place at the court of Irdonozur) is evidence of "a fairly mechanical form of religion (as most of Godwin's Protestant contemporaries judged Roman Catholicism)".[5]

By the time The Man in the Moone was published, discussion on the plurality of worlds had begun to favour the possibility of extraterrestrial life.[5] For Christian thinkers such a plurality is intimately connected to Christ and his redemption of man: if there are other worlds, do they share a similar history, and does Christ also redeem them in his sacrifice?[22] According to Philipp Melanchthon, a 16th-century theologian who worked closely with Martin Luther, "It must not be imagined that there are many worlds, because it must not be imagined that Christ died or was resurrected more often, nor must it be thought that in any other world without the knowledge of the son of God, that men would be restored to eternal life". Similar comments were made by Calvinist theologian Lambert Daneau. Midway through the 17th century the matter appears to have been settled in favour of a possible plurality, which was accepted by Henry More and Aphra Behn among others; "by 1650, the Elizabethan Oxford examination question an sint plures mundi? ('can these be many worlds?' – to which the correct Aristotelian answer was 'no') had been replaced by the disputation thesis quod Luna sit habitabilis ('that the moon could be habitable' – which might be answered 'probably' if not 'yes')".[5]

Transcription of lunar language, from the 1659 German edition

Godwin had a lifelong interest in language and communication (as is evident in Gonsales's various means of communicating with his servant Diego on St Helena), and this was the topic of his Nuncius inanimatus (1629).[7] The language Gonsales encounters on the Moon bears no relation to any he is familiar with, and it takes him months to acquire sufficient fluency to communicate properly with the inhabitants. While its vocabulary appears limited, its possibilities for meaning are multiplied since the meaning of words and phrases also depends on tone. Invented languages were an important element of earlier fantastical accounts such as Thomas More's Utopia, François Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel and Joseph Hall's Mundus Alter et Idem, all books that Godwin was familiar with.[47] P. Cornelius, in a study of invented languages in imaginary travel accounts from the 17th and 18th centuries, proposes that a perfect, rationally organised language is indicative of the Enlightenment's rationalism.[48] As H. Neville Davies argues, Godwin's imaginary language is more perfect than for instance More's in one aspect: it is spoken on the entire Moon and has not suffered from the Earthly dispersion of languages caused by the fall of the Tower of Babel.[47]

One of Godwin's sources for his Lunar language was Trigault's De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas.[47] Gonsales provides two examples of spoken phrases, written down in a cipher later explained by John Wilkins in Mercury, or The Secret and Swift Messenger (1641).[49] Trigault's account of the Chinese language gave Godwin the idea of assigning tonality to the Lunar language, and of appreciating it in the language spoken by the Chinese mandarins Gonsales encounters after his return to Earth. Gonsales claims that in contrast to the multitude of languages in China (making their speakers mutually unintelligible), the mandarins' language is universal by virtue of tonality (he suppresses it in the other varieties of Chinese). Thus the mandarins are able to maintain a cultural and spiritual superiority resembling that of the Lunar upper class, which is to be placed in contrast with the variety of languages spoken in a fractured and morally degenerate Europe and elsewhere.[47] Knowlson argues that using the term "language" is overstating the case, and that cipher is the proper term: "In spite of Godwin's claims, this musical 'language' is not in fact a language at all, but simply a cipher in which the letters of an existing language may be transcribed".[7] He suggests Godwin's source may have been a book by Joan Baptista Porta, whose De occultis literarum notis (1606)[lower-alpha 10] contains "an exact description of the method he was to adopt".[7]

• Anke Janssen, Francis Godwins "The Man in the Moone": Die Entdeckung des Romans als Medium der Auseinandersetzung mit Zeitproblemen. Peter Lang, 1981.[69]