Overview
- Emphasises the contingency of mathematics on cultural and political changes
- Focuses on new understanding of literary postmodernism in dialogue with mathematical science
- Reveals the overlooked ways in which representative mathematical concepts inform signature literary developments
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (PLSM)
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
Table of contents (5 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book delivers an innovative critical approach to better understand U.S. fiction of the information age, and argues that in the last eighty years, fiction has become increasingly concerned with its representations of mathematical ideas, images, and practices. In so doing, this book provides a fuller, transnational account of the place of mathematics in understanding mathematically informed novels. Literature and science studies have acknowledged and situated historical points of cultural crossover; by emphasising mathematics within this larger intellectual context – and not as an unlikely and alien adjunct to post-war culture – this monograph clarifies how mathematically informed postmodern fictions work in a cognate fashion to other fields undergoing structuralist revolutions. This is especially evident in fiction by the key, mathematically-literate Postmodern authors upon whom this study focuses, namely, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and David Foster Wallace, through which recent the technological revolutions, facilitated by mathematics, manifest in cultural discourse.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Stuart J. Taylor is a Lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland, UK.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Mathematics in Postmodern American Fiction
Authors: Stuart J. Taylor
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48671-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-48670-8Published: 25 April 2024
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-48673-9Due: 25 May 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-48671-5Published: 23 April 2024
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 308
Number of Illustrations: 10 b/w illustrations, 1 illustrations in colour
Topics: North American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Literature and Technology/Media, Literature, general