Brecht's Life of Galielo - Pre-test Plot Summary

Gap-fill exercise

This is a self-assessment test and your results are only to help you learn. Fill in all the gaps, then press "Check" to check your answers.
   authorities      book      common      doctrine      ecclesiastical      heliocentric      interrogation      Italian      Latin      money      recants      replicates      self-interest.      telescope      torture   
NB: This is a "potted" summary of Brecht's plot that very briefly indentifies some key points of the play, i.e. it is not a complete or vene exact summary! It introduces you to the basic plot.

Galileo is short of . A prospective student tells Galileo about a novel invention, the ("a queer tube thing"), being sold in Amsterdam. Galileo it, but then sells it to the Venetian Republic as his own creation.

Galileo uses the telescope to substantiate Copernicus' model of our solar system, which goes against both popular belief and church , and which he publishes in vernacular , rather than traditional scientific , so that it is accessible by the people. His daughter's marriage to a well-off young man (with whom she is genuinely in love) fails because of Galileo's reluctance to distance himself from his unorthodox teachings.

Galileo is brought to the Vatican for . Upon being threatened with , he his teachings. His students are shocked by his surrender in the face of pressure from the church .

Galileo, old and broken, living under house arrest, is visited by one of his former pupils, Andrea. Galileo gives him a (Two New Sciences) containing all his scientific discoveries, asking him to smuggle it out of Italy for dissemination abroad.

Andrea now believes Galileo's actions were heroic and that he just recanted to fool the authorities. However, Galileo insists his actions had nothing to do with heroism but were the result of