So Impossible to Imagine... Paths Between Literature and Science

Abstract

To imagine the impossible is apparently – and ‘pour cause’ – an inescapable test ground for all forms of human creativity. Indeed, a genuinely creative disposition is one that grapples with that part of the real which escapes established patterns of understanding and representation, in order to open unordinary potentials of imagination and expression. Pursuing a largely trans-/inter-disciplinary approach, Betweeen IX.17, edited by Luciano Boi, Franco D’Intino and Giovanni Vito Distefano, offers an overview of studies on the subject, spanning over modern and contemporary literature and culture. The wide investigation on the imagination of impossible sheds new light on the interrelationship between literature and science in setting, and/or pushing in different directions, the barrier delimiting the domain of certainty and of possibility.