Introduction

This chapter examines intersections of mathematics and literature within encyclopedic narratives through an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon the case of Nicolas Bourbaki, whose ‘encyclopedic’ treatise, Éléments de mathématique, provides an important cultural touchstone for contemporary visions of mathematics as a totalised system. The pseudonym for a group of world-leading French mathematicians working in the middle of the twentieth century, Bourbaki attempted to create a definitive mathematical textbook from three foundational structures. Bourbaki’s article ‘The Architecture of Mathematics’, often considered a manifesto for the group, details three ‘great’ or ‘mother-structures’—topological, algebraic, and ordered structures—which together encompass the entirety of mathematical activity and theory. While playing an important part in Bourbaki’s project to unify, encircle, and totalise mathematics, these structures also reveal how encyclopedic narratives utilise the figurative efficacy of mathematics to challenge such epistemological exhaustion. This chapter traces the cultural history of structures through the history and philosophies of mathematics, (post)structuralism, and postmodernism to establish the case for further exploration of the topological, algebraic, and ordered structures of mathematics as modelling DeLillo, Pynchon, and Wallace’s figurative strategies—respectively, of allusion, metaphor, and cognition—the interplay between mathematics and encyclopedic narrative can be better appreciated.