SOURCE: "Reconstructing Artistic and Scientific Paradigms: John Banville's The Newton Letter," in Mosaic, Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter, 1992, pp. 121-33.

In the following essay, McIlroy examines the connection between scientific and literary pursuits in Banville's The Newton Letter, and asserts that it "is an ingenious exploration of how conceptual frames, both artistic and scientific, are imagined and reimagined to produce new syntheses."

John Banville's The Newton Letter is the third volume in the contemporary Irish novelist's scientific tetralogy, which includes Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and Mefisto. Attempts to coordinate the four works have thus far taken the form of noting their intertextuality or their Irish themes. As I see it, a stronger case for their coherence can be made by focusing on their collective concern with what literary and scientific pursuits have in common. My specific focus on The Newton Letter derives from the way that this novella seems best to...