Measured Words: Computation and Writing in Renaissance Italy (Toronto Italian Studies) - Hardcover

Saiber, Arielle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802039502 ISBN 13: 9780802039507

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2017

Synopsis

Measured Words investigates the rich commerce between computation and writing that proliferated in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy.

Arielle Saiber explores the relationship between number, shape, and the written word in the works of four exceptional thinkers: Leon Battista Alberti’s treatis on cryptography, Luca Pacioli’s ideal proportions for designing Roman capital letters, Niccolò Tartaglia’s poem embedding his solution to solving cubic equations, and Giambattista Della Porta’s curious study on the elements of geometric curves. Although they came from different social classes and practiced the mathematical and literary arts at differing levels of sophistication, they were all guided by a sense that there exist deep ontological and epistemological bonds between computational and verbal thinking and production. Their shared view that a network or continuity exists between the arts yielded extraordinary results. Through measuring their words, literally and figuratively, they are models of what the very best interdisciplinary work can offer us.

About this title

About the Author

Arielle Saiber is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Bowdoin College.

Review

"Together with her lively writing style, Saiber’s erudition, based on close reading of primary sources and a remarkable command of secondary literatures, make Measured Words a pleasure to read. Scholars will return to this book for research leads and for chapters to assign to their graduate and undergraduate students"

(Renzo Baldasso, Cambridge, MA Renaissance Quarterly, vol 72 no 2)

‘The author connects to mathematics in many fascinating ways. In addition to the superb analysis of four case studies – Alberti, Paciolo, Tartaglia, and Della Porta, the reader is treated to an assortment of images that help visualize the connection each Renaissance man imagined. Highly recommended.’

(T. Timmons Choice Magazine vol 55:11:2018)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0802039502
• ISBN 13: 9780802039507
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280