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Tommaso Campanella's La Città Del Sole: Topography And Astrology, Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Dominican friar from Calabria, fra' Tommaso Campanella, had already solidified his anti-Aristotelian theories, had been persecuted and arrested, and was simulating madness in order to save his life while incarcerated in Naples. When Campanella conceived La Città del Sole under these circumstances in 1602, he was interpreting Telesio's naturalistic philosophy in a metaphysical manner, and was expressing in nuce the fundamental theories he would amplify two years later in Del Senso delle Cose e delle Magie.