In this seminar, we will explore how literature and the natural sciences shape each other. First, we will establish a general overview of the field “Literature and Science” and the discussion of the idea of the “Two Cultures”. After this introduction, we will investigate how literature and poetry narrate and convey scientific information, and how scientific experiments and innovations can shape literary fiction. Exemplary works of literature span from John Keats’s poem about Newton’s discoveries to contemporary works of fiction such as Ian McEwan’s “Solar”, Yaa Gyasi’s “Transcendent Kingdom”, or Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. However, we will also reverse this approach, and look at how narrative structure and literary devices (such as metaphors and analogy) influence scientific texts, including science books and academic journal articles. Gillian Beer’s analysis of “Darwin’s Plots” is one of the exemplary texts in this approach.
LSF: https://campus.uni-due.de/lsf/rds?state=verpublish&status=init&vmfile=no&publishid=384699&moduleCall=webInfo&publishConfFile=webInfo&publishSubDir=veranstaltung
- Lehrende(r): Elisabeth Haefs