The exact science par excellence, mathematics, paradoxically, has always played a very important role in creative literature, the realm of imagination, as a source of exact symmetries in the structure of literary works. Joyce is no doubt the author who is most obsessed with numbers, and this is shown in all his work, from the early Chambers Music (1907) to Finnegans Wake (1939). But it is above all in Ulysses (1922) that Joyce's mathematics and numerology appear in their most complex form. Here some experiments with numbers are sophisticated and unpredictable.Joyce distrusted the possibility of exact science to achieve absolute truths about the surrounding world and human life. Yet, his work has left a mark in the language of Mathematics and Physics.
The Seduction of Numbers in James Joyce's Work
Stefania Michelucci
2024-01-01
Abstract
The exact science par excellence, mathematics, paradoxically, has always played a very important role in creative literature, the realm of imagination, as a source of exact symmetries in the structure of literary works. Joyce is no doubt the author who is most obsessed with numbers, and this is shown in all his work, from the early Chambers Music (1907) to Finnegans Wake (1939). But it is above all in Ulysses (1922) that Joyce's mathematics and numerology appear in their most complex form. Here some experiments with numbers are sophisticated and unpredictable.Joyce distrusted the possibility of exact science to achieve absolute truths about the surrounding world and human life. Yet, his work has left a mark in the language of Mathematics and Physics.
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