Fictions of Knowledge

JOHN BENDER Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies, Stanford University, USA LORNA HUTSON Berry Professor of English Literature, University of St Andrews UK SARAH TINDAL KAREEM Assistant Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles, USA KATHRYN MURPHY Fellow and Tutor in English, Oriel College, Oxford, UK BARBARA J. SHAPIRO Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley, USA CARL WATKINS Senior Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge, UK MICHAEL WOOD Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University, USA

Locating literature at the intersection of distinct areas of thinking on the nature, scope and methods of knowledge - philosophy, theology, science, and the law - this book engages with literary texts across periods and genres to address questions of probability, problems of evidence, the uses of experiment and the poetics and ethics of doubt.Locating literature at the intersection of distinct areas of thinking on the nature, scope and methods of knowledge - philosophy, theology, science, and the law - this book engages with literary texts across periods and genres to address questions of probability, problems of evidence, the uses of experiment and the poetics and ethics of doubt.