Lightning in a Wine Cask: Vernacular Meteorology and Terminology in the Goodly Gallerye of William Fulke

Abstract

Lightning and thunderbolts have been sources of wonder since classical antiquity. Interpretations of these aerial and destructive phenomena had roots in the Homeric tradition and further evolved in the meteorological writings of Aristotle and others. In Aristotelian and early encyclopedic writings, lightning and thunderbolts were explained as different manifestations of the dry exhalation or wind. Writers categorized thunderbolts based on their subtlety, speed, and effects. In the sixteenth cen- tury, William Fulke viewed thunderbolts similarly to his antique predecessors but interpreted wondrous aspects and categorizations in light of the scientific and religious convictions of Elizabethan England. His English meteorological text, Goodly Gallerye, demonstrates an attempt to standardize terminology in the vernacular while also maintaining continuity in descriptions and interpretations of lightning and thunderbolts. This continuity can also be seen in subsequent writers on lightning and thunderbolts who used chymical theories of meteorology.