Quantum writing - literature and the world of numbers: talk by Professor Steven Connor HD

Professor Steven Connor, Grace 2 Professor of English at the University of Cambridge, delivers a public lecture at Madingley Hall on 13 June 2013. Since the beginning of the 19th century, literature has placed itself firmly in opposition to the realm of number and quantifying operations of all kinds. But for the last century there are also unmistakeable signs that literature and number have been drawing ever more closely together. Professor Connor discusses the ways in which literary writers over the last century, including Lewis Carroll, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, have approached and sometimes embraced mathematical operations in their work, often through reflections on probability. He also considers the statistical and quantitative approaches to literary analysis increasingly made available by digital technology. The lecture is chaired by Professor Helen Cooper, Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge, and introduced by Dr Rebecca Lingwood, Director of Continuing Education. Please note that the lecture proper begins at the 3:55 minute point in the video.