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When the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in his famous "Somnium" (1608) creates a fictitious dream narrative in which the earth is observed from the moon, it becomes clear that the shift from the geocentric to the heliocentric worldview entails a radical change of perspective that can be achieved only by means of the imagination. What appears as a sunrise is in reality due to the earth's own movement. Where appearance and reality diverge, the new model requires a fictional account without which it remains incomprehensible. Orbiting around Kepler’s short tale, this seminar will focus on cosmic narratives and poetic explorations of outer space, from Lucian's True Stories and Icaromenippus (2nd century CE), one of the earliest literary treatments of a journey through space, Plutarch’s dialogue On the face of the Moon (late 1st century CE), to Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638) and Kant's »Of the Inhabitants of the Stars« (1755). What is the epistemic function of literary representations of the cosmos? Are space-travel narratives thought experiments? What role does fiction and the imagination play in the science of astronomy? By pursuing these and related questions, this course will question common assumptions about the relationship of science to fiction and the literary imagination while tracing key junctures in the history of astronomy.