ABSTRACT
This brief survey covers the historic moments, philosophies, and critical debates that most influenced my formulation of a geometric reading of literature. For a comprehensive overview of how the concepts of space and form have changed over time, I recommend the recent studies by science writer Margaret Wertheim (The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace) and astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet (L'Univers chiffonné).3 For more mathematically detailed books on the development of physical and geometric space from antiquity through the midtwentieth century, see the classic work by Max Jammer (Concepts of Space), Cornelius Lanczos's Space Through the Ages, and Jeremy Gray's Ideas of Space.4 I would also like to point to the anthology of primary readings on the geometry of space by Miliè Capek, Concepts of Space and Time.5 Although the pivotal studies of Thomas Kuhn, Alexander Koyré, Pierre Duhem, Marshall Clagett, Hermann Weyl, and Hans Reichenbach are in my mind as I write this chapter, and although they continue to inspire such debates as the continuity/discontinuity and epistemology of scientific thought in the History of Science and Science Studies, their works do not directly investigate the links between geometry and literature and are not discussed in this chapter's survey.
