Programma e bibliografia del corso di Letteratura Inglese III anno accademico 2010-2011
Raccontare la scienza.
La scrittura creativa e scientifica nella cultura britannica
fra Ottocento e Novecento
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, offre le categorie concettuali per esplorare come la conoscenza è rappresentata in testi di divulgazione scientifica e in testi letterari che trattano di teorie scientifiche.
Il linguaggio è usato dagli scienziati per articolare ipotesi di lavoro, descrivere stadi della ricerca e mostrare risultati. Nei modi discorsivi impiegati per veicolare teorie e scoperte a lettori non specializzati si riscontrano non solo la chiarezza e il rigore dell’esposizione, ma anche componenti propriamente letterarie.
Si esaminerà la classificazione del linguaggio scientifico come denotativo e del linguaggio letterario come connotativo, mostrando come la comprensione delle teorie scientifiche possa essere agevolata dall’uso delle figure retoriche. I tropi oltrepassano la referenzialità e trasportano i concetti scientifici da un piano letterale ad uno non letterale, ma aggiungono anche strati di significato che generano polisemia.
I rapporti fra epistemologia ed estetica nella divulgazione e nelle rappresentazioni letterarie della scienza saranno discussi analizzando:
Erewhon; or Over the Range (London: Trübner, 1872) di Samuel Butler
Chapter I. Waste Lands; Chapter II. Down in the Wool-shed; Chapter V. The River and the Range; Chapter VI. Into Erewhon; Chapter VII. First Impressions; Chapter XX. The Colleges of Unreason; Chapter XXI. The Book of the Machines; Chapter XXII. The Machines—continued; Chapter XXIII. The Machines—concluded.
The Island of Doctor Moreau. A Possibility (New York: Stone & Kimball, 1896) di H. G. Wells
Introduction; Chapter I. In the Dingey of the “Lady Vain”; Chapter III. The Strange Face; Chapter XII. The Sayers of the Law; Chapter XIII. The Parley; Chapter XIV. Doctor Moreau Explains; Chapter XV. Concerning the Beast Folk; Chapter XVI. How the Beast Folk Taste Blood; Chapter XXI. The Reversion of the Beast Folk; Chapter XXII. The Man Alone.
The Blind Watchmaker (London: Longman, 1986) di Richard Dawkins
Preface; Chapter I. Explaining the Very Improbable; Chapter II. Good Design; Chapter III. Accumulating Small Change.
Visions of Caliban. On Chimpanzees and People (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993) di Dale Peterson e Jane Goodall
Introduction; Chapter 1. Sounds and Sweet Airs; Chapter 2. Man or Fish?; Chapter 3. To Snare the Nimble Marmoset.
Ark Baby (London: Bloomsbury, 1998) di Liz Jensen
Prologue; Chapter 1. 2005: In Which a Rogue Male Escapes from the Herd; Chapter 2. In Which a Mistaken Piglet Hovers Near Death; Chapter 3. Cuisine Zoologique; Chapter 5. Father of the Man; Chapter 7. In Which the Rogue Male Attempts Integration in the Stoned Crow; Chapter 14. The Origin of Species; Chapter 28. The Celebration of Evolution Banquet.
Narratives of Science.
Creative and Scientific Writing in British Culture
between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Century
The assumption that literature, and not only science, is a cognitive system, and that science, and not only literature, is a system of representation provides the conceptual framework for exploring how knowledge is represented in texts of popular science and in literary texts which tackle scientific theories. Language is used by scientists to articulate working hypotheses, illustrate methods, describe stages of research and show results. The discursive modes used in conveying theories and discoveries are characterised not only by clarity and rigour, but also by literary components.
The classification of scientific language as denotative and of literary language as connotative will be examined in order to show that the understanding of scientific theories can be enhanced through the use of figures of speech. However, while tropes go beyond referentiality and transport scientific concepts from a literal to a non-literal plane, they add layers of meaning which engender polysemy.
The relationships between epistemology and aesthetics in popularisation and fictionalisation of science will be discussed by analysing:
Erewhon; or Over the Range (London: Trübner, 1872) di Samuel Butler
Chapter I. Waste Lands; Chapter II. Down in the Wool-shed; Chapter V. The River and the Range; Chapter VI. Into Erewhon; Chapter VII. First Impressions; Chapter XX. The Colleges of Unreason; Chapter XXI. The Book of the Machines; Chapter XXII. The Machines—continued; Chapter XXIII. The Machines—concluded.
The Island of Doctor Moreau. A Possibility (New York: Stone & Kimball, 1896) di H. G. Wells
Introduction; Chapter I. In the Dingey of the “Lady Vain”; Chapter III. The Strange Face; Chapter XII. The Sayers of the Law; Chapter XIII. The Parley; Chapter XIV. Doctor Moreau Explains; Chapter XV. Concerning the Beast Folk; Chapter XVI. How the Beast Folk Taste Blood; Chapter XXI. The Reversion of the Beast Folk; Chapter XXII. The Man Alone.
The Blind Watchmaker (London: Longman, 1986) di Richard Dawkins
Preface; Chapter I. Explaining the Very Improbable; Chapter II. Good Design; Chapter III. Accumulating Small Change.
Visions of Caliban. On Chimpanzees and People (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993) di Dale Peterson e Jane Goodall
Introduction; Chapter 1. Sounds and Sweet Airs; Chapter 2. Man or Fish?; Chapter 3. To Snare the Nimble Marmoset.
Ark Baby (London: Bloomsbury, 1998) di Liz Jensen
Prologue; Chapter 1. 2005: In Which a Rogue Male Escapes from the Herd; Chapter 2. In Which a Mistaken Piglet Hovers Near Death; Chapter 3. Cuisine Zoologique; Chapter 5. Father of the Man; Chapter 7. In Which the Rogue Male Attempts Integration in the Stoned Crow; Chapter 14. The Origin of Species; Chapter 28. The Celebration of Evolution Banquet.
Bibliografia
Andrea Battistini, ed., Letteratura e scienza (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1977) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia]
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).
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].
Daniel Cordle, Postmodern Postures: Literature, Science and the two Cultures Debate (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999) [Biblioteca della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia].
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].
Fernand Hallyn, ed., Metaphor and Analogy in the Sciences (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000).
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].
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].
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).
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].
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].
