Perception and analogy explores ways of seeing scientifically in the eighteenth century. The book examines how sensory experience is conceptualised during the period, drawing novel connections between treatments of perception as an embodied phenomenon and the creative methods employed by natural philosophers. Covering a wealth of literary, theological, and pedagogical texts that engage with astronomy, optics, ophthalmology, and the body, it argues for the significance of analogies for conceptualising and explaining new scientific ideas. As well as identifying their use in religious and topographical poetry, the book addresses how analogies are visible in material culture through objects such as orreries, camera obscuras, and aeolian harps. It makes the vital claim that scientific concepts become intertwined with Christian discourse through reinterpretations of origins and signs, the scope of the created universe, and the limits of embodied knowledge.

'...the book is a strong example of how science studies can advance literary studies and why literature
scholars do well to understand the influence of science.'
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

'The strength of Perception and Analogy comes in its detailed catalogue of how analogies are used to affirm religious beliefs during this period. Scholars working in disability studies will find the chapters on human limitation particularly useful, as Powell’s close readings affirm the centrality of disabled bodies for linking medical and religious discourses during the eighteenth century.'
Eighteenth-Century Fiction

'Rosalind Powell’s Perception and Analogy stands as a valuable contribution to eighteenth-century scholarship, shedding new light on the intellectual interplay between poetry, science, and religion during the Age of Enlightenment. Powell’s study reaffirms the pivotal role of analogy in integrating diverse discourses, enriching our comprehension of eighteenth-century intellectual life.'
The British Society for Literature and Science

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Rosalind Powell is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol