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Agon: Poetry's Challenge to the Mathematization of Reality (1920s-1960s)

Contributor(s): Sridhar, Anirudh (Author)

ISBN: 9780198985457

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Hardcover
$135.00
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Pub Date: March 26, 2026

Lexile Code: 0000

Target Age Group: NA to NA

Physical Info: 0.93" H x 9.33" L x 6.48" W ( 1.38 lbs) 304 pages

Series: Oxford English Monographs

Descriptions, Reviews, etc.

Description: In this volume Anirudh Sridhar explores the contest between poetry and mathematics in their quest for truth. Close readings of British and American poetry from the 1920s to the 1960s reveal how modernist poetry asserted the poetic medium as best capable of representing reality in ways beyond the reach of mathematics.

Review Quotes: "It is written in a refreshingly clear style"; ... not at all in the constipated manner of some literary critics, and I think it should interest not only people in the field of the modernisms of mathematics and poetry, but people with a liking for the work of the people he discusses (Yeats, Empson, Roberts, Riding, and Olson)." -- Jeremy Gray, The Open University

"This is a thorough and well-informed book, especially notable for its treatment of mathematics and science, superior to that of most scholarly work in literary studies." -- Arkady Plotnitsky, Purdue University

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