This chapter introduces Vincenzo Figliucci and attempts to historicize the intellectual environment in which the poet was formed and with which he engaged. By reconstructing the contours of Figliucci’s education and intellectual networks, the analysis sheds new light on the circumstances that brought him into contact with some of the leading figures of his time, including the Jesuit mathematician Christopher Clavius, Galileo, and Tuscan literati involved in the early seventeenth-century crystallization of the question of language. Situated at the nexus of literary and scientific discourses—including the Jesuit mathematical renaissance in Italy, the novelty carried by Galileo’s discoveries and the literature they inspired, and the waning yet still persistent debate over the codification of the vernacular—the Stanze emerge as a meticulous investigation of the new science, enriched by poetic influences from Dante, Giovanni Pontano, and Torquato Tasso. This chapter shows how Figliucci interrogated the cosmological and astrological frameworks inherited from previous traditions while incorporating earlier literary models into the poem’s intricate cultural and ideological concerns.