The focus of this dissertation is twofold. On the one hand it is situated in the field of research of the dialectic between literature/culture and science in modernity. As part of the larger MDRN research project 'Literary Knowledge', this thesis seeks to understand the nature of literature as not just a knowledge reproducer, but as an active transformer, a textual laboratory which dealt with aspects beyond the scope of science as such. On the other hand, this thesis homes in on the peculiar phe