Although literature gained its autonomy around 1800, it has since then continually engaged in a poetologically relevant discourse with the alien system of science. The present volume examines this phenomenon from a comparatistic perspective, and considers the following questions: System theory : What is the status of the autonomy of a system if it engages with another system through more than casual borrowings? Aesthetics of representation : What consequences do references to science have for literary form and style? Epistemology: Does literature transmit its own knowledge? If it does, of what does this knowledge consist, and how is it distinguished from non-literary knowledge?