Doctor Copernicus

{{Short description|1976 novel by John Banville}}

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File:DoctorCopernicusNovel.jpg)]]

Doctor Copernicus is a novel by John Banville, first published in 1976. "A richly textured tale" about Nicolaus Copernicus,{{cite news|first=Marie|last=Arana|url=https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/44974539.html?dids=44974539:44974539&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Sep+19%2C+1999&author=Marie+Arana&pub=The+Washington+Post&desc=John+Banville%3A+Ireland%27s+Wordsmith&pqatl=google|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130616083903/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/44974539.html?dids=44974539:44974539&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Sep+19,+1999&author=Marie+Arana&pub=The+Washington+Post&desc=John+Banville:+Ireland's+Wordsmith&pqatl=google|url-status=dead|archive-date=June 16, 2013|title=John Banville: Ireland's Wordsmith|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=19 September 1999}}[https://www.proquest.com/docview/408504630] it won that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize.{{cite news|url=http://www.scotsman.com/news/outsider-rides-booker-s-wave-of-success-as-the-sea-rolls-in-1-1099847|title=Outsider rides Booker's wave of success as The Sea rolls in|newspaper=The Scotsman|date=11 October 2005|accessdate=11 October 2005}}

Doctor Copernicus contains four sections. The first two focus on the subject's life until about the age of 36. In the third, Copernicus's aide Rheticus narrates how he convinced Copernicus to publish De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. The fourth focuses on the great scientist's death.

Thirty years after it first appeared, Brian McIlroy praised Doctor Copernicus for its "great intellectual ambition." Linda Hutcheon, in A Poetics of Postmodernism, wrote that it is a "historiographic metafiction."{{cite journal|first=Brian|last=McIlroy|title=Theory, Science and Negotiation: John Banville's Doctor Copernicus|journal=Irish University Review |year=2006|jstor=25517290|volume=36|issue=1 |pages=25–38}}