Algebraic Art

Algebraic Art explores the invention of a peculiarly Victorian account of the nature and value of aesthetic form, and it traces that account to a surprising source: mathematics. Drawing on literature, art, and photography, it explores how the Victorian mathematical conception of form still resonates today.

Andrea Henderson is Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, where she has taught since 2002. She came to UCI after 11 years teaching at the University of Michigan. She received her B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1986, and her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. Professor Henderson's research is centered on nineteenth-century British culture. She is the author of Romantic Identities: Varieties of Subjectivity, 1774-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Romanticism and the Painful Pleasures of Modern Life (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and articles on subjects ranging from eighteenth-century embryology to Victorian photography.

Introduction
1: Geometry: Math for Math's Sake: Non-Euclidean Geometry and Aestheticism
2: Algebra: Symbolic Logic and the Logic of Symbolism
3: Analysis: Magic Mirrors: Formalist Realism in Victorian Photology and Photography
4: Analogy: The Physics and Poetics of Analogy
5: Invariant Forms: '[T]he bonds of verse' Form as Discipline
Coda: '[T]o bury Euclid deep in the living flesh'