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