Imágenes de imperio, erudición e historia en la nomenclatura lunar del siglo XVIII

Abstract

This paper discusses the processes and rationale through which authors of lunar nomenclatures in the seventeenth century developed a variety of linguistic and rhetorical strategies in order to organise and represent their telescopic studies of the lunar surface as a cartographic space. Through a comparison of the naming systems advanced by Pierre Gassendi, Micheal Van Langren, Johannes Hevelius and Giambattista Riccioli, I argue that lunar toponymies display associative, analogical, metaphorical and emblematic naming strategies that derive from scholarly erudition, cartographic practices and social contexts. These nomenclatures were used to project political, philosophical and  disciplinary concerns of their authors.