Journey to the Moon

What if the moon were another world for which ours served as the moon? An absurd notion, but one which leads our narrator to travel to a paradisiacal world in which he is a monster, a malfunction of nature, and a myth. The dream quickly becomes a nightmare, however, when the ruling ecclesiastical courts condemn him for his heretical opinions and illicit beliefs. As viewed from the moon, the philosophical, scientific, anthropocentric, and religious certitudes that reign on Earth seem trivial. This masterpiece of Libertine literature emerges as an unprecedented example of relativization and a scathing attack on the values and institutions of 18th-century French society. The real-life Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655), made famous by Edmond Rostand, was a dramatist and poet; in his prose works, he shows himself to be the forerunner to Jules Verne and Johannes Kepler.