Programma e bibliografia Letteratura Inglese III anno accademico 2009-2010
Narratori Scienziati.
La scrittura creativa e scientifica nella cultura britannica
fra Ottocento e Novecento.
Si esamineranno le componenti referenziali e figurative nella letteratura e nella saggistica di argomento scientifico. Conducendo il linguaggio oltre alla referenzialità, le figure retoriche trasportano i concetti scientifici al di là del loro contesto. Tuttavia, spostando il significato verso un piano non letterale, esse generano plurisignificazione.
Lo studio della scrittura scientifica e letteraria nella cultura britannica, dove la ‘popular science’ è ampiamente attestata, si concentrerà su On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) e The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) di Charles Darwin, The Blind Watchmaker (1986) e Unweaving the Rainbow (1998) di Richard Dawkins, Morpho Eugenia (1992) di A. S. Byatt, The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science (1996) di Steven Mithen, The Seven Daughters of Eve (2001) di Bryan Sykes. Comparando le scelte formali compiute per esporre le teorie relative all’origine e all’evoluzione dell’uomo sulla terra, si indagherà in quali modi le finalità argomentative ed estetiche siano perseguite sia nei testi di divulgazione scientifica sia nei testi letterari di argomento scientifico.
La considerazione che la letteratura, e non solo la scienza, è un sistema cognitivo, e che la scienza, e non solo la letteratura, è un sistema di rappresentazione, solleciterà riflessioni epistemologiche ed estetiche sui concetti di ‘conoscibilità’ e di ‘rappresentabilità’ della conoscenza.
Testi primari:
Antonia Susan Byatt, Morpho Eugenia, in Angels & Insects: Two Novellas (New York: Random House, 1992).
Antonia Susan Byatt, On Histories and Stories (London: Vintage, 2001).
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1859).
Charles Darwin, The Descent of the Man (London: John Murray, 1871).
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (London: Longman, 1986).
Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow (London: Longman, 1986).
Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science (London: Thames & Hudson, 1996).
Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: the Origin of Music, Language, Mind and Body (London: Phoenix, 2006).
Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve (London - New York: Bantam Press, 2001).
Testi critici:
Beate Allert (ed.), Languages of Visuality: Crossings between Science, Art, Politics, and Literature (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996).
Frederick Amrine, ed., Literature and Science as Modes of Expression, with an Introduction by Stephen J. Weininger (Dordrecht - London: Kluwer Academic, 1989).
Andrea Battistini, ed., Letteratura e scienza (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1977) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia]
Gillian Beer, Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
Daniel Candel Bormann, The Articulation of Science in the Neo-Victorian Novel: a Poetics (and two Case Studies) (Bern - Oxford: P. Lang, 2002) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Damien Broderick, The Architecture of Babel: Discourses of Literature and Science (Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press, 1994) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Theodore L. Brown, Making Truth: Metaphor in Science (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003).
Richard Boyd, Thomas S. Kuhn, La metafora nella scienza; prefazione di Luisa Muraro (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1983) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Ilse N. Bulhof, The Language of Science: a Study of the Relationship between Literature and Science in the Perspective of a Hermeneutical Ontology, with a Case Study of Darwin’s The Origin of Species (Leiden: Brill, 1992) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Marcia Birken and Anne C. Coon, Discovering Patterns in Mathematics and Poetry (Amsterdam - New York: Rodopi, 2008) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Joseph Carroll, Evolution and Literary Theory, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995 (in particolare “The Historical Position of a Darwinian Critical Paradigm”, pp. 16-31, e “The Thematic Structure of the Darwinian Paradigm”, pp. 291-322) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
John Christie and Sally Shuttleworth, eds, Nature Transfigured: Science and Literature 1700-1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989).
Daniel Cordle, Postmodern Postures: Literature, Science and the two Cultures Debate (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Suzanne Cunningham, Philosophy and the Darwinian Legacy (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1996).
Peter Allan Dale, In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture: Science, Art, and Society in the Victorian Age (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, eds, The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative, Forewords by E. O. Wilson and Frederick Crews (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005) (in particolare “Foreword from the Scientific Side”, by E.O. Wilson, pp. vii-xi; “Foreword from the Literary Side”, by Frederick Crews, pp. xiii-xv; “Introduction: Literature—a last Frontier in Human Evolutionary Studies, by Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, pp. xvii-xxvi; Ian McEwan, “Literature, Science, and Human Nature”, pp. 5-19, and Brian Boyd, “Evolutionary Theories of Art”, pp. 147-176) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Ian Hacking, Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); traduzione italiana Conoscere e sperimentare (Roma - Bari: Laterza, 1987) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Fernand Hallyn, ed., Metaphor and Analogy in the Sciences (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000).
Donna Jeanna Haraway, Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields. Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976) (in particolare “Paradigm and Metaphor”, pp. 1-32; “Conclusion: Of Paradigm and Scientists”, pp. 188-206).
Katherine Hayles, Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science (Chicago - London: University of Chicago Press, 1991) (in particolare “Chaos and Poststructuralism”, pp. 175-208; “The Politics of Chaos: Local Knowledge versus Global Theory”, pp. 209-236; “Conclusion: Chaos and Culture: Postmodernism(s) and the Denaturing of Experience”, pp. 265-295).
Katherine Hayles, My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts (Chicago - London: University of Chicago Press, 2005) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Patrick Colm Hogan, Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: a Guide for Humanists (New York - London: Routledge, 2003).
Ludmilla J. Jordanova, ed., Language of Nature: Critical Essays on Science and Literature, foreword by Raymond Williams, 1st ed. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986) (in particolare Maureen McNeil, “The Scientific Muse: The Poetry of Erasmus Darwin”, pp. 159-203; “The Face of Nature’: Anthropomorphic Elements in the Language of The Origin of Species”, pp. 207-243) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
James Krasner, The Entangled Eye: Visual Perception and the Representation of Nature in Post-Darwinian Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Philip Kuberski, Chaosmos: Literature, Science, and Theory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
Earl G. Ingersoll, Representations of Science and Technology in British Literature since 1880 (New York: Peter Lang, 1992).
William Hilton Leatherdale, The Role of Analogy, Model and Metaphor in Science (Amsterdam - Oxford: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1974).
George Lewis Levine, One Culture: Essays in Science and Literature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).
George Lewis Levine, Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction (Cambridge (Mass) - London: Harvard University Press, 1988).
George Lewis Levine, Realism and Representation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in Relation to Science, Literature, and Culture (Madison - London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993).
George Lewis Levine, Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England (Chicago - London: University of Chicago Press, 2002) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Helga Nowotny, Peter Schotts, and Michael Gibbons, Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001) (in particolare “The Transformation of Society”, pp. 1-20; “The Epistemological Core”, pp. 179-200) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Stuart Peterfreund, ed., Literature and Science: Theory and Practice (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990).
George Roppen, Evolution and Poetic Belief. A Study in Some Victorian and Modern Writers (Oslo: Oslo University Press, 1956).
Daniel Rothbart, Explaining the Growth of Scientific Knowledge: Metaphors, Models, and Meanings (Lewiston: N.Y., E. Mellen Press, 1997).
Margery Arent Safir, ed., Melancholies of Knowledge: Literature in the Age of Science (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Elinor S. Shaffer, ed., Literature and Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Elinor S. Shaffer, ed., The Third Culture: Literature and Science (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1998).
Joseph W. Slade and Judith Yaross Lee, eds, Beyond the Two Cultures: Essays on Science, Technology, and Literature (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990).
Paola Spinozzi, “Sapere (è) rappresentare. Evoluzioni della conoscenza in Morpho Eugenia di A. S. Byatt”, in Le riscritture del postmoderno. Percorsi angloamericani, a cura di Ornella De Zordo e Fiorenzo Fantaccini (Bari: Palomar athenaeum, 2002), pp. 355-388 [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Robert F. Storey, Mimesis and the Human Animal: on the Biogenetic Foundations of Literary Representation (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996) (in particolare “Pugnacious Preface”, pp. xiii-xxii; “What Is Art for? Narrative and the Ludic Reader”, pp. 101-131) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Mauricio Suárez, ed., Fictions in Science. Philosophical Essays on Modeling and Idealization (New York - London, Routledge, 2008) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
Celia Wallhead, The Old, the New and the Metaphor: A Critical Study of the Novels of A. S. Byatt (Atlanta - London: Minerva, 1999).
David L. Wilson and Zack Bowen, Science and Literature: Bridging the two Cultures (Gainesville - University Press of Florida, 2001) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
