Questions of reading in literary texts become noticeable when the structure of the text, that is, the notational iconicity of the page, performs and shows itself. This performativity of the material of the text itself, like the display of letters and other non-alphabetical signs or the occurrence of lists, diagrams and tables, provokes a disturbance of a “normal” linearity of reading. This lecture will discuss texts by Samuel Beckett (1956’s Watt) and Velimir Khlebnikov (1923’s Doski Sudby – The Tables of Fate) in which the reader must deal with “deformations” of the linear text. In both works, mathematics and mathematicity come into play in connection with the question of organizing space.
Karin Kröger received her master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she completed her master’s thesis, “Notational Iconicity of Poetic Texts: On the Example of Velimir Khebnikov.” Currently, she is a doctoral student at the DFG-Graduate School, where she studies mathematical literature and literary mathematics.
