Dr Giovanni Lista (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) - Translating a Plurality of Worlds

Since its first publication, Bernard de Fontenelle’s Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686) underwent countless new editions, translations and imitations across Europe. In an elegant dialogue, a philosopher entertains a noblewoman with the hypothesis of extra-terrestrial life across the solar system, while illustrating the inner workings of a secularised, heliocentric universe. As the work travelled temporally and geographically, it provided fertile ground for its translators to adapt its controversial contents to the debates of their times. This lecture focusses on the Italian, German and English translations the Entretiens issued in first half of the eighteenth century, connecting them as one transnational case study on the ways knowledge was codified and transferred in Europe. All are welcome; no need to book.

About the speaker:

Giovanni Lista is a Fritz Thyssen Fellow at IZEA, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He has obtained his PhD in intellectual history at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy and has held postdoc positions at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg (Göttingen) and at the Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel), where he has developed an academic interest in history of knowledge, cultural history of science and translation studies. From September 2026, he will be the recipient of a MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Central European University (CEU), Vienna, Austria. 

Tuesday 28th October 2025, 16:30-17:30

Room 780 in IOE - Bedford Way (20)

Photo credit:

Opening page of Trattenimenti sopra la pluralità de Mondi, ca 1730, MS. 3768, c. [II]r, courtesy of Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna - Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna.