Logic, Modern Literature and Artificial Intelligence
Will be published approx. on 10. December 2026
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-1-350-58503-4 (ISBN)
Description
Examining the relationship between these fields for the first time, this book explores a series of surprising affinities between symbolic logic, literature, and AI, from the late-nineteenth century to the present.
Shedding light on the relationship between the sciences and the arts, this book examines how writers such as Lewis Carroll, T. S. Eliot, Laura (Riding) Jackson, Samuel Beckett, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges and Susan Howe both respond to and react against logic. It proposes a new framework to account for this agonistic relationship, arguing that the mathematisation of logic in the mid-nineteenth century created a productive tension between logic and literature, spurring modernist and postmodernist innovations, and catalysing the development of AI.
Covering topics such as developments in computing from Ada Lovelace to AI; the cross-fertilisation of logic and literature from Lewis Carroll to Susan Howe; and recent advances in digital texts and neural nets, this book also speaks eloquently to contemporary concerns about artificial intelligence and the fate of the humanities.
Shedding light on the relationship between the sciences and the arts, this book examines how writers such as Lewis Carroll, T. S. Eliot, Laura (Riding) Jackson, Samuel Beckett, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges and Susan Howe both respond to and react against logic. It proposes a new framework to account for this agonistic relationship, arguing that the mathematisation of logic in the mid-nineteenth century created a productive tension between logic and literature, spurring modernist and postmodernist innovations, and catalysing the development of AI.
Covering topics such as developments in computing from Ada Lovelace to AI; the cross-fertilisation of logic and literature from Lewis Carroll to Susan Howe; and recent advances in digital texts and neural nets, this book also speaks eloquently to contemporary concerns about artificial intelligence and the fate of the humanities.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Illustrations
13 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-58503-4 (9781350585034)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Rachel Falconer is Professor of Modern English Literature and Head of Department at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sangam MacDuff is a Research Fellow at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sangam MacDuff is a Research Fellow at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Content
Introduction
Sangam MacDuff (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)
Part I: Victorian and Modernist Logic
1. Victorian Equations:The Logic of Exchange in Nineteenth-Century England
Andrea Kelly Henderson (UC Irvine, USA)
2. Not as a Logician: Victoria Welby and Susan Howe read C.S. Peirce
Helen Thaventhiran (University of Cambridge, UK)
3. On Not Being Made of Literature: Franz Kafka and the Logical Priority of Life
Patrick Jones (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
4. 'that flame... that flame... that burns away filthy logic': Samuel Beckett and the Aporias of Digitality
Balazs Rapcsak (University of Basel, Switzerland)
5. Logic and its Other in the Modernist Architectural Manifesto
David Spurr (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Part II: Postmodern Developments
6. I.A. Richards and Cybernetics
Simon Swift (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
7. Entrenchment Versus Indeterminacy: Disposing of gavagai, quaddition and grue
Ian MacKenzie (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
8. Logic and Life: On Robert Besson's L'Argent
Robert B. Pippin (University of Chicago, USA)
9. The Illogic of Fiction: Speculative Reflections on Abduction, Naturalization, and Signification in Narrative
Simona Bartolotta (University of Oxford, UK)
10. The Logic of the Clinamen in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities: Swerving across Light Materiality, Utopia, and Queer Poetics
Alberto Tondello (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Part III: Artificial Intelligence and Posthumanism
11. How a Picture No-Longer Held us Captive: Playful Logics and Creativity Across Media
Dorothy Butchard and Niall Gallen (University of Birmingham, UK)
12. Talking Machines, Missing Secretaries, and Bad Readers
Rebecca Roach (University of Birmingham, UK)
13. Reading Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun with AI: What Does ChatGPT Think Makes Humans Unique?
Megan Quigley (Villanova University, USA)
14. The Interplay Between the Anthropomorphism of Automata and the Mechanisation of Humanity as Represented in Contemporary Cinema
Jannik Kuechen (University of Tuebingen, Germany) and Diogo Sasdelli (Danube University. Austria)
Index
Sangam MacDuff (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)
Part I: Victorian and Modernist Logic
1. Victorian Equations:The Logic of Exchange in Nineteenth-Century England
Andrea Kelly Henderson (UC Irvine, USA)
2. Not as a Logician: Victoria Welby and Susan Howe read C.S. Peirce
Helen Thaventhiran (University of Cambridge, UK)
3. On Not Being Made of Literature: Franz Kafka and the Logical Priority of Life
Patrick Jones (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
4. 'that flame... that flame... that burns away filthy logic': Samuel Beckett and the Aporias of Digitality
Balazs Rapcsak (University of Basel, Switzerland)
5. Logic and its Other in the Modernist Architectural Manifesto
David Spurr (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Part II: Postmodern Developments
6. I.A. Richards and Cybernetics
Simon Swift (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
7. Entrenchment Versus Indeterminacy: Disposing of gavagai, quaddition and grue
Ian MacKenzie (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
8. Logic and Life: On Robert Besson's L'Argent
Robert B. Pippin (University of Chicago, USA)
9. The Illogic of Fiction: Speculative Reflections on Abduction, Naturalization, and Signification in Narrative
Simona Bartolotta (University of Oxford, UK)
10. The Logic of the Clinamen in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities: Swerving across Light Materiality, Utopia, and Queer Poetics
Alberto Tondello (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Part III: Artificial Intelligence and Posthumanism
11. How a Picture No-Longer Held us Captive: Playful Logics and Creativity Across Media
Dorothy Butchard and Niall Gallen (University of Birmingham, UK)
12. Talking Machines, Missing Secretaries, and Bad Readers
Rebecca Roach (University of Birmingham, UK)
13. Reading Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun with AI: What Does ChatGPT Think Makes Humans Unique?
Megan Quigley (Villanova University, USA)
14. The Interplay Between the Anthropomorphism of Automata and the Mechanisation of Humanity as Represented in Contemporary Cinema
Jannik Kuechen (University of Tuebingen, Germany) and Diogo Sasdelli (Danube University. Austria)
Index