Mathematics and literature

Abstract

Euclid's Elements is not a novel - but it could have been. Mathematics differs in obvious ways from conventional artistic literature, yet there are also similarities, explored here through writers including Plato, Galileo, Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll. By considering possible definitions of what a novel is - using ideas from E. M. Forster, Mikhail Bakhtin and Gérard Genette - it is argued that the fundamental difference between conventional mathematical and artistic literature is one of form rather than content. © Springer-Verlag Italia, Milano 2009.