Conceptual Mathematics and Literature: Toward a Deep Reading of Texts and Minds

Description

The old practices of interpretation have been exhausted, and the humanities and social sciences are facing a crisis. Is there a way out of the labyrinth of reading? In this book, Professor Neuman presents a challenging approach to interpreting texts and reading literature through the spectacles of conceptual mathematics. This approach strives to avoid the simplicity of a quantitative approach to the analysis of literature as well as both the relativistic and the ideological dangers facing a qualitative reading of a text. The approach is introduced in a rigorous and accessible manner and woven with insights gained from various fields. Taking us on a challenging journey from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro, the book shows how we may gain a deeper understanding of literature and the aesthetic experience of reading. Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Figures and Tables List of Greek Letters Chapter 1 Introduction: On the Difficulty of Reading 1 On the Difficulty of Reading 2 Abstract Nonsense and Concrete Nonsense 3 There Is Nothing New in This Book 4 Epilogue: Borges’ Insight Chapter 2 Symmetries and Literature, or How the Eel Popped Out of the Tap 1 On Augury, Birds and the Difficulty of Reading 2 On Eels and Conceptual Mathematics 3 Forgive Me Father for I Have Sinned 4 Tragic Transformations 5 From Sets to Categories 6 The Eel and Anu’s Penis 7 From Anu’s Penis to Conceptual Structures Chapter 3 “Why Is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?”: On Forgetting and Similarities 1 On the Lesson We May Learn from a Riddle 2 Relations: from Peirce to Tesnière 2.1 Atmospheric Skull Sodomizing a Grand Piano Chapter 4 Maps of Identity: From Kafka’s the Metamorphosis to Borges’ Cartographers 1 Who Am I? 2 Man Is Never Coincident with Himself 3 On Borges’ Map and Banach’s Fixed-point Theorem 4 From Bakhtin to Banach, and from Banach to Embedding 5 Personal Identity: a Mathematical Perspective 6 Peirce on Self and Identity 7 Me, My Father, My Son and the Functor 8 On Retracts and Idempotents Chapter 5 Perspectives and Transformations: From Rashomon to The Death of Bunny Munro 1 From a Different Perspective 2 Adjoints and Back-translation 2.1 The Death of Bunny Munro Chapter 6 Hide and Seek: On the Reflective Novel 1 Down the Rabbit Hole and into the Reflective Mind 2 “Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe” 3 Down the Rabbit Hole and into the Coffee Bottle 4 The Reflective Subcategory 5 Rumpelstiltskin and Transformations 6 Here Comes the Author Chapter 7 Everything Must Change: From Rabbit, Run to the Kreutzer Sonata 1 Rabbit, Run 2 Transformations: the Conceptual Mathematics Perspective 3 On the Troubled Relations of Harry, the Rabbit 4 Some Lessons about Rabbit 4.1 The Kreutzer Sonata Chapter 8 On Dimensionality, Orthogonal Morphisms and the Naughty Turd 1 Dimensionality and the Complexity of the Novel 2 The Corrections of a Troubled Family 3 On Orthogonal Morphisms, Splitting and Complex Characters Chapter 9 Discussion: Toward a Deep Reading of Texts and Minds 1 From the Stabat Mater to the Chanting Mountains References Author Index Subject Index