Literature and the Mathematical, Journal of Romance Studies, 7:3

Literature and the Mathematical

Edited by Mairéad Hanrahan

A Special Number of the Journal of Romance Studies, 7:3 (Winter 2007)

How does literature relate to mathematics? What role is played, what function fulfilled by mathematical elements within the literary text? These questions are the starting point of the essays in this volume which span a range of writers from those whose interest in mathematics is well known (notably the Oulipo writers, including Jacques Roubaud who himself contributes a piece) to others in relation to whom the relevance of mathematics appears more unexpected. Focussing on what literary texts do to and with mathematics, the volume explores the widely diverse ways the mathematical is deployed structurally and thematically.

Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction

Mairéad Hanrahan

Literature and Mathematics: The Difference

Mairéad Hanrahan

Joyce, Husserl, Derrida: Calculating the Literary Infinite

Jean-Michel Rabaté

An Occult Arithmetic: The ‘Proustian Equation' according to Beckett's Proust

Céline Surprenant

Georges Perec: Distributive Constraints, Textual Liberties

Jacques Neefs

Maddening Mathematics: The Kinship of the Rational and the Irrational in the Writing of Robert Musil

Gwyneth E. Cliver

Borges: Between Zero and Infinity

floyd merrell

Portrait of the Artist as a Mathematician

Christelle Reggiani and Caroline Marie

Roubaud's Number on Numbers

Véronique Montémont

Bourbaki and the Oulipo

Jacques Roubaud

For online details, see the JRS website at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berghahn/romance/2007/00000007/00000003;jsessionid=4dqkdqujg6qan.victoria