Eine andere Welt? Cyrano de Bergerac zwischen Philosophie und Fantastik

Cyrano de Bergerac’s comic novel L’Autre Monde (1657) is known for its innovative philosophical discourse. Threatened by the catholic inquisition and in order to avoid the censorship of 17th century France, Cyrano de Bergerac had to imagine a way to present his text as less provocative. In order to achieve this, he integrates his philosophical ideas in a fictional journey to the empires of the moon and of the sun where everything appears to be the opposite of the human civilisation on Earth. However, the fiction is more than a framework for the philosophical discourse. It appears that the fantastic and futuristic aspects of the civilisation on the moon – that Cyrano de Bergerac imagines long before the invention of these two genres – are a component part of Cyrano’s main philosophical theses.