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HOW_SOFT_A_WHISPER
January 17, 2007
One of the funnier things I've run into
in some time is the new concept being I came across this
pushed by the literary theorist Franco only recently, in
Moretti. Instead of "Close Reading", a book review in
he champions "Distant Reading". _The Nation_ by
one of his colleagues,
This is Moretti's attempt William Deresiewicz.
at putting literary
criticism -- or at least, [ref]
literary history -- on
something like an
empirical, scientific And perhaps another member of
basis... that grand club of mildly
deranged characters (such as
What's funny is that myself) who insist on looking
everyone seems to for the great, lost, land bridge
find Moretti's ideas between the two cultures.
kind of funny -- no
one is persuaded that BIBLES
he's really correct,
but everyone takes it
easy on him.
Web searches on the subject
turned up a surprising I'm a fan of Cosma Shalizi,
Cosma Shalizi connection... a man with a scientific
background who neverthless
Shalizi's review of engages in much "popular"
Moretti's "Atlas" writing in the humanities
treats it with a fields.
certain affectionate, SHALIZI
amused contempt. Though you have to
wonder about that
("Literary professors project he's been
are so *cute* when working on for
they try to do years, putting his
statistics!") notes on every
subject imaginable
Moretti responded out on the web.
by inviting Shalizi
to one of his Strange fellow.
conferences...
[ref]
A sing the beast to
sleep manuever?
Perhaps...
Moretti does
seem to have a
talent for
making friends.
But on the other hand, it is
not at all a bad idea for
Moretti to get someone with
a mathematical bent to teach
him something about
statistical significance.
[ref]
[ref]
If the quotations of Moretti
I've seen are any guide, the
man is over-reaching tremendously
with his campaigning for "distant
reading", but there's no reason
that researchers should not take By stepping back, you can
that approach -- it's a little cover more ground.
peculiar if they don't already.
FIRST13
Though obviously, also, there
are limits to what you can get
out of such things. Let's graph the
frequency of publication
of post-nuclear apocalypse
stories!
Hypothesis: they'll ramp
Consider the usual approach: up quickly after 1945,
close reading of the and peak around ten year
canonized heroes. later, gradually trailing
off for the next two
Who's the best? The big S. decades, when suddenly
So, you sit down and read they stop.
"Hamlet".
And what would
But who were Shakespere's this study tell
competitors? us exactly?
How many Elizabethean playwrites If it turned out
were there, how many plays? that the hypothesis
was off slightly,
And... isn't "Hamlet" a genre what would *that*
work, a revenge play? How many say?
revenge plays were there?
"Oh my god, there's
When did the form start? almost a complete
drop in post-apocalypse
What were the genre tropes? stories in the
early 70s! And then
after the movie
It would be very surprising if "Omega Man" they
these kinds of questions weren't started up again."
answerable by Shakesperean scholars...
but it's also clear that it's not Yes, that would
the way Shakespere is taught at be a fascinating
the introductory level. result, wouldn't
it?
And if you begin expanding your
range of interest away from the
well-studied Elizabethean
terrain, do you find that other
similar questions have known
answers?
It would seem
to make sense to
engage in *both*
distant reading TWO_LEVEL
and close reading.
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