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Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History
In this groundbreaking book, Professor Franco Moretti argues heretically that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. He insists that such a move could bring new luster to a tired field, one that in some respects is among “the most backwards disciplines in the academy.�
Literary study, he argues, has been random and unsystematic. For any given period scholars focus on a select group of a mere few hundred texts: the canon. As a result, they have allowed a narrow distorting slice of history to pass for the total picture.
Moretti offers bar charts, maps, and time lines instead, developing the idea of “distant reading,� set forth in his path-breaking essay “Conjectures on World Literature,� into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, where the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres—the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel—as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined.
Literary study, he argues, has been random and unsystematic. For any given period scholars focus on a select group of a mere few hundred texts: the canon. As a result, they have allowed a narrow distorting slice of history to pass for the total picture.
Moretti offers bar charts, maps, and time lines instead, developing the idea of “distant reading,� set forth in his path-breaking essay “Conjectures on World Literature,� into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, where the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres—the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel—as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined.
119 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
35 people are currently reading
998 people want to read
About the author
Franco Moretti
40books96followersFranco Moretti is an Italian literary scholar, trained as a Marxist critic, whose work focuses on the history of the novel as a "planetary form". He has written five books, Signs Taken for Wonders (1983), The Way of the World (1987), Modern Epic (1995), Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900 (1998), and Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (2005). His recent work is notable for importing, not without controversy, quantitative methods from the social sciences into domains that have traditionally belonged to the humanities. To date, his books have been translated into fifteen languages.
Moretti has recently edited a five-volume encyclopedia of the novel, entitled Il Romanzo (2004), featuring articles by a wide range of experts on the genre from around the world. It is available in a two-volume English language edition (Princeton UP, 2006).
Moretti earned his doctorate in modern literature from the University of Rome in 1972, graduating summa cum laude. He was professor of comparative literature at Columbia University before being appointed to the Danily C. and Laura Louise Bell Professorship at Stanford University. There, he founded the Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel. He has given the Carpenter Lectures at the University of Chicago, the Gauss Seminars in Criticism at Princeton, and the Beckman Lectures at the University of California-Berkeley. In 2006, he was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also has been a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a frequent contributor to the New Left Review and a member of Retort, a Bay Area-based group of radical intellectuals. He is also a scientific adviser to the French Ministry of Research.
Moretti has recently edited a five-volume encyclopedia of the novel, entitled Il Romanzo (2004), featuring articles by a wide range of experts on the genre from around the world. It is available in a two-volume English language edition (Princeton UP, 2006).
Moretti earned his doctorate in modern literature from the University of Rome in 1972, graduating summa cum laude. He was professor of comparative literature at Columbia University before being appointed to the Danily C. and Laura Louise Bell Professorship at Stanford University. There, he founded the Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel. He has given the Carpenter Lectures at the University of Chicago, the Gauss Seminars in Criticism at Princeton, and the Beckman Lectures at the University of California-Berkeley. In 2006, he was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also has been a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a frequent contributor to the New Left Review and a member of Retort, a Bay Area-based group of radical intellectuals. He is also a scientific adviser to the French Ministry of Research.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
January 28, 2015
On the Origin & Evolution of Literary Forms
(by Means of Cultural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured forms in the Struggle for Markets)
‘Theories are nets�, wrote Novalis, ‘and only he who casts will catch�.
This is an interesting book, with the first three quarters composed of a trio of essays on literary history, looked at quantitatively (and the last quarter made up of an evolutionary scientist trying to play literary critic and messing up everything that went before!). Moretti uses what he calls ‘Distant Reading� wherein he moves as far away from the individual literary works as possible and tries to detect patterns and forms that emerge, to look for connections, intersections, patterns � evolution itself. By doing this the ambitious project is set forth � to isolate the evolution of literature and to see the causes and consequences of the diverging paths within the evolutionary Tree of Literature.
These models are drawn from disciplines which are not usually mentioned along with literary studies: graphs � from quantitative history, maps � from geography, and trees � from evolutionary theory.
Three chapters; three models; three distinct ‘sections� of the literary field. First, the system of novelistic genres as a whole; then, ‘the road from birth to death� of a specific chronotope; and now, the micro level of stylistic mutations. But despite the differences of scale, some aspects of the argument remain constant.
What these literary models allows Moretti do is fascinating: He first reduces the vast torrent of literary works to a few recognizable constructs (say gothic fiction, or the narrative voice), and abstract them, constructing new, artificial objects like the maps and graphs and tress. The whole exercise depends on these artificial objects being more than the sum of their parts: they should possess emergent qualities, should rearrange its components in a non-trivial way, and bring some hidden patterns to the surface that should in turn help us shine a light on literary theory, or more to the point, the primary concern of this book, literary evolution.
CULTURAL SELECTION
One of the prime impulses behind the work seems to be a curiosity about the problem of literary survival � why some genres, literary styles, narrative techniques and character types survive, and why some goes extinct. And why do they follow a distinct pattern, tending to correspond to a 20-30 period during which new forms arise, then die out or become an accepted part of literature (where in readers discover that they like a certain device, and if a story doesn't seem to include it, they simply don’t read it � and the story becomes extinct, while the device/form prospers).
It is only by looking at those larger patterns that we can analyze literary history: the temporal cycles that determine the rise and fall of literary forms.
Just as natural selection in biology denotes the selection o f the biological type that best survives in the given environment, so there is no doubt that some literary forms have more success than others and survive longer thanks to multiple cultural and economic factors of which the graphs in the first chapter of this book (for example, figures 3 to 10) furnish ample and valuable illustration.
Normal literature remains in place for twenty-five years or so . . . But where does this rhythm come from?
An easy answer is proposed, arising from the length of this interval � that perhaps it has to do with every new generation trying out new styles, thus allowing new styles to attempt to thrive, or fail.
But this is dismissed as too simplistic and Moretti turns to a Marxist conception of History to be able to answer the Variation, Evolution and Survival of literary forms.
In all the trees representing the evolution of different literary forms in Moretti’s book, culltural selection � the survival or extinction of one form rather than another� is the principal operator. But once you have established this pattern, how this cultural selection operates then becomes the question. And quite predictably, we have to turn to the material conditions, the Environment, to answer that.
A diversity spectrum. Quite wide, in figures 30 and 31, because when a new genre first arises, and no ‘central' convention has yet crystallized, its space-of-forms is usually open to the most varied experiments. And then, there is the pressure of the market. The twenty-five authors o f the Strand Magazine are all competing for the same, limited market niche, and their meanderings through morphospace have probably a lot to do with a keen desire to outdo each other’s inventions: after all, when mystery writers come up with an ‘aeronaut� who kills a hiker with the anchor of his balloon, or a somnambulist painter who draws the face of the man he has murdered, or a chair that catapults its occupants into a neighboring park, they are clearly looking for the Great Idea that will seal their success. And yet, just as clearly, aeronauts and catapults are totally random attempts at innovation, in the sense in which evolutionary theory uses the term: they show no foreknowledge� no idea, really� of what may be good for literary survival. In making writers branch out in every direction, then, the market also pushes them into all sorts of crazy blind alleys; and divergence becomes indeed, as Darwin had seen, inseparable from extinction.
As a common denominator for all these attempts at isolating Literary Evolution Moretti seems to choose: a materialist conception of literary form. Thus echoing the obsession with form as the most profoundly social aspect of literature: “Form as force.�
This is the closest Moretti comes to conceding a single explanatory framework. But he immediately changes course and reasserts that this is anew field of study and this is only a tentative first step. We have to await more research and study before we can settle for any overarching Theory of Everything in literature.
September 15, 2013
I'm sympathetic to Moretti's project as a whole - to use large amounts of data about literature in order to understand the big-picture issues in literary history - but I think he overstates the novelty of his approach. The tone is polemical, but his methods have been employed by historians and philologists for over 100 years. Moretti's only innovation is couching his findings in the language of evolutionary biology and representing them with visual elegance.
His examples, moreover, are unusually well-suited for illustrating his methods. Just look at his discussion of "genre traits," which thinks about genre evolution as a combination of random mutation and survival of the fittest. This works well for detective fiction and other varieties of popular 19th-century novels, where genres are more clearly defined, and traits easily noticeable. However, this theory could not be applied with any success to my field (poetry in medieval China) because of the porous nature of the genres and the unreliable archival record.
The unreliability of archives and databases is probably the biggest challenge to Moretti's model, since his approach has to make certain assumptions about our records, e.g.:
-that works which survive into the present are representative
-that errors have not been introduced during transmission
-that further errors have not been introduced during digitization
-that the patterns he sees literary history are meaningful and explainable (not just the product of chance)
In my experience, none of these assumptions can be held with any certainty, at least not for the study of 7-10th century China.
Moretti is a very skilled reader and forceful writer. He makes a good case for the value of statistics and other scientistic methods for the study of literature. He is also aware of the limitations of his project, and that his methods can answer certain kinds of questions but not others, or at the very least direct the critic's attention to an interesting line of inquiry.
A worthwhile (and brief) book for anyone interested in current trends in literary criticism. However, don't believe the rhetoric that something completely new is happening here.
His examples, moreover, are unusually well-suited for illustrating his methods. Just look at his discussion of "genre traits," which thinks about genre evolution as a combination of random mutation and survival of the fittest. This works well for detective fiction and other varieties of popular 19th-century novels, where genres are more clearly defined, and traits easily noticeable. However, this theory could not be applied with any success to my field (poetry in medieval China) because of the porous nature of the genres and the unreliable archival record.
The unreliability of archives and databases is probably the biggest challenge to Moretti's model, since his approach has to make certain assumptions about our records, e.g.:
-that works which survive into the present are representative
-that errors have not been introduced during transmission
-that further errors have not been introduced during digitization
-that the patterns he sees literary history are meaningful and explainable (not just the product of chance)
In my experience, none of these assumptions can be held with any certainty, at least not for the study of 7-10th century China.
Moretti is a very skilled reader and forceful writer. He makes a good case for the value of statistics and other scientistic methods for the study of literature. He is also aware of the limitations of his project, and that his methods can answer certain kinds of questions but not others, or at the very least direct the critic's attention to an interesting line of inquiry.
A worthwhile (and brief) book for anyone interested in current trends in literary criticism. However, don't believe the rhetoric that something completely new is happening here.
November 29, 2022
Moretijeva zabavna i izuzetno podsticajna studija pokušava da pronađe način da se knjževnim tekstovima pristupa sa distance kako bi se bolje razumeli. Takozvani „distant reading� suprotno od čuvenog „close reading-a�, koji predstavlja metodu pažljivog čitanja teksta, predstavlja upravljanje velikim bazama podataka. Književnost se operacionalizuje, ali ne na način puke kvantifikacije, koja bi učnilia teoriju književnosti „naučnijom�, već iz praktičnih razloga. Na primer, u Britaniji 19. veka broj od 200 romana može delovati izuzetno veliko, ali on predstavlja manje od 1% ukupne produkcije romana tokom tog veka! Kako možemo da imamo celovitu sliku neke pojave ukoliko se usredsređujemo na njene pojedinačne izraze, umesto šireg plana? Istorija književnosti nije, dakle, po Moretijevom shvatanju, samo istorija izuzetnosti, odnosno kanona, već istorija oblika, ideja i tendencija, višestruko povezanih sa društvenom zbiljom. Na osnovu toga, radi lakšeg, celovitijeg i svrsishodnijeg upravljanja podataka o književnosti, Moreti razvija tri pristupa, „pozajmljenih� iz drugih nauka: grafikoni, mape i stabla. Ipak, ono što je ključno za svaki navedeni pristup nije pokušaj da se nešto učini atraktivnijim, iako može i to da bude, već da se putem nove vizuelne prezentacije dođe do nekih zaključaka kojih bismo bili lišeni bez njih. Posebno su mi u tom svetlu bile zanimljive mape vezane za genezu romana u engleskoj književnosti � gde vidimo kako se različiti žanrovi prepliću i preklapaju u odnosu na društvene i druge okolnosti. Tu je i uzbudljiva analiza prostora žanra „seoskih pripovesti� (village stories) Meri Mitford ili razvijanje stabla slobodnog neupravnog govora od Getea i Flobera, preko Dostojevskog i Džojsa, sve do Ljose i Karpentijera. Naravno, nije Moreti u svemu originalan, ali kao retko ko inspiriše na nova čitanja i pokušaj pronalaženja novih paradigmi. Mislim da svi interdisciplinarni pristupi, ukoliko su shvaćeni temeljno, mogu samo da pomognu književnosti i da će im budućnost ići naruku.
Mogla bi da padne i jedna mapa/grafikon/stablo ovog prikaza, ali nekom drugom prilikom.
Mogla bi da padne i jedna mapa/grafikon/stablo ovog prikaza, ali nekom drugom prilikom.
June 18, 2009
The articles in the New York Times following the initial publication of these essays (now anthologized into this book) made Moretti's approach sound more outlandish than it really is. Contrary to popular journalistic accounts, Moretti is not advocating for the complete obliteration of reading practices. Rather, as he shows in the three sections of this anthology, he is looking at how quantitative analyses of books might demonstrate large scale trends in their development, publication, and consumption. He does engage in a fair amount of abstraction to demonstrate his points regarding why such quantitative analysis might be helpful. For instance, he groups books into genres to chart their trends and developments, without ever acknowledging that certain novels might defy such classification. However, if his project necessitates this type of generalization, the conclusions he is able to draw from it really do give a different, broader picture of the literary field. In an age where people think studying literature is either a useless exercise or a repetition of the same territory that has been charted for centuries, Moretti presents both compelling reasons for continuing to study literature as well as new ways in which we might go about doing so. While I think the application of his methodologies would best be approached with more nuance than the examples he applies it to, the starting point he brings to such work is invaluable.
Read
May 16, 2020----May 2020----
Reread this because I'm doing some more digital humanities stuff on the history of ordinary language philosophy. The most useful content for my purposes is in the "graphs" chapter in the discussion of the life cycles of literary genres and the hypothesis that they may be tied to the lifespan of human generations (where a generation is defined by some shared collective destabilization, like May '68, or or probably COVID-19). The use of quantitative methods of looking at cultural artifacts is a way of directing attention in new ways, and breaking free of the normal focus on a handful of very successful cultural attractors.
----2007----
Studying literature with lots of diagrams and charts.
Reread this because I'm doing some more digital humanities stuff on the history of ordinary language philosophy. The most useful content for my purposes is in the "graphs" chapter in the discussion of the life cycles of literary genres and the hypothesis that they may be tied to the lifespan of human generations (where a generation is defined by some shared collective destabilization, like May '68, or or probably COVID-19). The use of quantitative methods of looking at cultural artifacts is a way of directing attention in new ways, and breaking free of the normal focus on a handful of very successful cultural attractors.
----2007----
Studying literature with lots of diagrams and charts.
July 5, 2021
I was very much prepared to hate this book. After reading about Moretti's reputation as something of a sexual predator, but also because as a (whisper it) remnant-Romantic I have a predisposition to resent the shift society has taken to exalt data over dialectic. Not that I don't value data; data is crucial. It's just that I've read Hume, Russell, and Kuhn. This modern notion that data and science are infallible, somehow outside human interpretation and history is not only false, it create morons out of intelligent people. Blah blah blah "the science says this" is so common now, is in every newspaper and website and blog, that I want to shoot myself. What is "the science"? What study? By whom? Under what conditions? Using what methods? Paid for by what entity? Using what subjects? Over what period of time? Data selected from what sources? Replicated how? Published where? Interpreted by whom? In what context? Why are we studying this? There is human fallibility and subjectivity all over "the science". And even "the math", with its paradoxes that outstretch formal logic. I am suspicious of people who exalt data as a way of "really getting to the truth" about anything, especially literature. Data and dialectic are of equal importance. We are human. We understand things with human brains.
But, but, but.... all of that said, I did love this book. It is simple and beautiful in what it posits. Moretti makes no bones about the need to recognise that data and interpretation are separate but interwoven entities, to be regarded with care. He recognises that he relies on other people's data. He doesn't pretend that he has gotten to the "real truth" of literature, as I feared he would. If anything, he offers multiple interpretations of the data and there is the feeling, having read this, that one has gained a valuable supplemental knowledge -- an auxiliary tool not to erase the value of any hermeneutic exercise on the history of literature, but to strengthen and expand it.
Moretti quotes Brecht: "I have noticed that we put many people off our teaching because we have an answer to everything. Could we not, in the interest of propaganda, draw up a list of questions that appear to us completely unsolved?" This book is a jumping off point. He wants us to reconsider old arguments based on new data... but not to discard them.
Some things I liked.
- the graphs charting the ups and downs of the popularity of the novel in various countries as a means to discuss why looking at history in terms of longue dureé (long spans of time), cycles (intermediary spans of time), and events (individual happenings) all have value in terms of flow and structural analysis. The interest in cyclical reoccurrences and patterns over singular "movements", the removal of the word "the" from epochal events, the beauty of opposing/oscillating/double-natured forms over "dominant" ones seems almost... feminist. I felt like I was reading Irigaray. I feel sacrilegious even saying this considering Moretti's reputation. It probably wasn't his intent. But damn.
- I especially enjoyed how this evolved into a discussion of genre as a key cyclical form. The charts showing the rise and fall of the epistolary, gothic, and historical novels -- then the 44 British genres between 1740 - 1900, showing quite clearly that most groups rise and fall every 25-30 years. And after this, a reflection on (but not an assertion about) generational influence and its rhythm. Which is something I myself have thought about a lot in terms of musical forms over the 20th century, the death of rock n roll.... How the death of one generation's art might outlive its "artistic usefulness" as reality changes not because of any specific event or set of events (although he also reflects on this re: Paris 1968!), but because the minds interpreting reality change. But why every 25-30 years? He offers some potential explanations, but in the end he allows the question to remain unanswered.
- I appreciate the notes about the rest of the world, the nod to decentralise European patterns as somehow defining of the novel as a global form.
The Maps section was less compelling. The first 2/3 are all about the geography of the village story, which seems like a poor example to extrapolate the overall usefulness of maps to critical distance reading. Lo and behold, in the final third Moretti admits in a long footnote that they were a poor choice because they're not all that representative and "geometry is more important than geography", basically invalidating the whole first part of the chapter as little more than an amusing exercise. The final 1/3 of the chapter then tries to show how geometry is a useful abstraction for distance reading, but it's not convincing and I'm not sure how much insight it provides. He admits several times that many story "types" are unmappable, and the "maps" themselves by the end seem more like "mind maps" -- or visual note taking by the critic to try and distill some abstract ideas, any abstract ideas!, from the text. I'm not sure that's very new or inventive. I realise he's written an entire other book about this. (And this chapter sometimes reads like an advertisement for it!) Maybe he's more convincing in that. But I almost wish this chapter wasn't in the book.
The trees and letters sections were more interesting. [will write more later]
Disclaimer: I am not a literary academic, so some of these insights might be "ho hum" to people more well versed than I. So be it. I was still impressed.
All of that said, I do feel like any class taking on this material needs to discuss Moretti's outstanding and unresolved issues around the alleged rape and harassment of his graduate students. It bothers me that he's still allowed to work with graduate students without at least some investigation of Dr. Kimberley Latta's case, AT LEAST. I don't think his ideas should be discredited, but it would be horrible for some starry eyed and unsuspecting fan of his work to get hurt. And no one's reputation or genius should afford them immunity from a potential felony, or insulate them from the suffering they may have inflicted on others.
But, but, but.... all of that said, I did love this book. It is simple and beautiful in what it posits. Moretti makes no bones about the need to recognise that data and interpretation are separate but interwoven entities, to be regarded with care. He recognises that he relies on other people's data. He doesn't pretend that he has gotten to the "real truth" of literature, as I feared he would. If anything, he offers multiple interpretations of the data and there is the feeling, having read this, that one has gained a valuable supplemental knowledge -- an auxiliary tool not to erase the value of any hermeneutic exercise on the history of literature, but to strengthen and expand it.
Moretti quotes Brecht: "I have noticed that we put many people off our teaching because we have an answer to everything. Could we not, in the interest of propaganda, draw up a list of questions that appear to us completely unsolved?" This book is a jumping off point. He wants us to reconsider old arguments based on new data... but not to discard them.
Some things I liked.
- the graphs charting the ups and downs of the popularity of the novel in various countries as a means to discuss why looking at history in terms of longue dureé (long spans of time), cycles (intermediary spans of time), and events (individual happenings) all have value in terms of flow and structural analysis. The interest in cyclical reoccurrences and patterns over singular "movements", the removal of the word "the" from epochal events, the beauty of opposing/oscillating/double-natured forms over "dominant" ones seems almost... feminist. I felt like I was reading Irigaray. I feel sacrilegious even saying this considering Moretti's reputation. It probably wasn't his intent. But damn.
- I especially enjoyed how this evolved into a discussion of genre as a key cyclical form. The charts showing the rise and fall of the epistolary, gothic, and historical novels -- then the 44 British genres between 1740 - 1900, showing quite clearly that most groups rise and fall every 25-30 years. And after this, a reflection on (but not an assertion about) generational influence and its rhythm. Which is something I myself have thought about a lot in terms of musical forms over the 20th century, the death of rock n roll.... How the death of one generation's art might outlive its "artistic usefulness" as reality changes not because of any specific event or set of events (although he also reflects on this re: Paris 1968!), but because the minds interpreting reality change. But why every 25-30 years? He offers some potential explanations, but in the end he allows the question to remain unanswered.
- I appreciate the notes about the rest of the world, the nod to decentralise European patterns as somehow defining of the novel as a global form.
The Maps section was less compelling. The first 2/3 are all about the geography of the village story, which seems like a poor example to extrapolate the overall usefulness of maps to critical distance reading. Lo and behold, in the final third Moretti admits in a long footnote that they were a poor choice because they're not all that representative and "geometry is more important than geography", basically invalidating the whole first part of the chapter as little more than an amusing exercise. The final 1/3 of the chapter then tries to show how geometry is a useful abstraction for distance reading, but it's not convincing and I'm not sure how much insight it provides. He admits several times that many story "types" are unmappable, and the "maps" themselves by the end seem more like "mind maps" -- or visual note taking by the critic to try and distill some abstract ideas, any abstract ideas!, from the text. I'm not sure that's very new or inventive. I realise he's written an entire other book about this. (And this chapter sometimes reads like an advertisement for it!) Maybe he's more convincing in that. But I almost wish this chapter wasn't in the book.
The trees and letters sections were more interesting. [will write more later]
Disclaimer: I am not a literary academic, so some of these insights might be "ho hum" to people more well versed than I. So be it. I was still impressed.
All of that said, I do feel like any class taking on this material needs to discuss Moretti's outstanding and unresolved issues around the alleged rape and harassment of his graduate students. It bothers me that he's still allowed to work with graduate students without at least some investigation of Dr. Kimberley Latta's case, AT LEAST. I don't think his ideas should be discredited, but it would be horrible for some starry eyed and unsuspecting fan of his work to get hurt. And no one's reputation or genius should afford them immunity from a potential felony, or insulate them from the suffering they may have inflicted on others.
March 24, 2017
This is the literary equivalent of having an author take a shit directly into your brain. Literature abstracted as data, and poorly presented in graphically displeasing formats. It makes me sad to know this branch of academia exists, and anyone who would waste their life and intellectual energy doing this will most certainly be reincarnated as a cockroach.
April 19, 2023
great interdisciplinary exercise and fresh examination of maybe different lenses through which to view literary history, but potentially very inconsistent! instead, i used this as a reader of sorts. moretti cites an even number of scholars and concepts i want to check out. i especially enjoyed the “maps� chapter from my linguistics background. (trees too. to a lesser extent.)
December 10, 2022
Sencillamente de mayor quiero ser Franco Moretti
November 5, 2019
Forse uno dei libelli (sfortunatamente molto breve, di contenuto effettivo sono settanta pagine scarse) che più mi hanno ispirato quest'anno. Ho fatto un po' indigestione di saggi che parlano e parlano e parlano senza mai dare dati concreti, davanti alle tre indagini di Moretti mi sono ritrovato invece piuttosto preso e, cosa che non avrei mai detto, riflessivo. L'analisi del primo capitolo sul sostanziale zeitgeist letterario è decisamente ispirante, così come quella sul successo editoriale di Doyle e dell'"occultamento" storico dei suoi rivali; il secondo capitolo, uno studio sui luoghi concreti (o mappe, come usa Moretti) e la loro percezione nell'economia del romanzo, è a tratti troppo specifico, leggermente meno scorrevole. Il punto più interessante, che permea tutta l'opera, è il voler riportare alla luce ogni contesto letterario, andando contro la mera e ritrita analisi dei grandi capolavori.
Ma.
Questo metodo in fondo a me sembra un po' qualcosa di scontato, e qui arriva il problema di fondo che ho avuto con questo "nuovo" Distant Reading: se ricercare con minuzia vari dettagli a-letterari può aiutare in una comprensione più olistica, il voler proporre una vera e propria metodologia di indagine letteraria, per quanto un'impresa coraggiosa, lo trovo...piuttosto innecessario. Con ciò, lo scopo ideale del libro perde di forza, potrebbe anche arrivare a irritare il lettore (all'inizio in effetti non sapevo dove volesse andare a parare); ma, come evidente dal primo paragrafo, dopotutto la lettura riesce a dare degli spunti che in sé, e non in un'ottica troppo metodologica, rimangono ottimi.
Abbastanza interessante il saggio del genetista Alberto Piazza, nonostante paia più un parere/recensione scientifica che non per forza doveva essere infilato al termine del libro. Forse con l'aggiunta di altri pareri del genere, sempre da autori non addetti ai lavori, si potrebbe creare una vera e propria discussione su questa letteratura vista da lontano.
Ma.
Questo metodo in fondo a me sembra un po' qualcosa di scontato, e qui arriva il problema di fondo che ho avuto con questo "nuovo" Distant Reading: se ricercare con minuzia vari dettagli a-letterari può aiutare in una comprensione più olistica, il voler proporre una vera e propria metodologia di indagine letteraria, per quanto un'impresa coraggiosa, lo trovo...piuttosto innecessario. Con ciò, lo scopo ideale del libro perde di forza, potrebbe anche arrivare a irritare il lettore (all'inizio in effetti non sapevo dove volesse andare a parare); ma, come evidente dal primo paragrafo, dopotutto la lettura riesce a dare degli spunti che in sé, e non in un'ottica troppo metodologica, rimangono ottimi.
Abbastanza interessante il saggio del genetista Alberto Piazza, nonostante paia più un parere/recensione scientifica che non per forza doveva essere infilato al termine del libro. Forse con l'aggiunta di altri pareri del genere, sempre da autori non addetti ai lavori, si potrebbe creare una vera e propria discussione su questa letteratura vista da lontano.
October 16, 2007
I was intrigued by the idea of it: a quantitave study of the literary output of the world as a whole. He analyzes the evolution and morphology of the novel through historical times, or at least he sets out to. While the book generated a lot of thought and had some interesting digressions, I think it bit off more than it could chew, or just went on too many random tangents. Still, interesting to think of novels as genomes, that expresses certain traits in some generations, that are somewhat dependent on past novels as a foundation, yet also necessitate mutation (new radically inventive ideas) to continue to survive.
October 16, 2024
Moretti is always such a boisterous and thoughtful writer. At moments, he has that particular lack of clarity of French thinking, and then he bursts in with the punchiness of the best French thinkers but the practicality of an applied reasearcher. My favourite quotation from the book is this full sentence: "Great page" (referring to Bakhtin referring to Raskolnikov's thinking in Crime and Punishment).
June 11, 2023
Amúgy érdekes volt de biztos nem olvasnám újra
Read
April 19, 2016Books survive if they are read and disappear if they aren’t: and when an entire generic system vanishes at once, the likeliest explanation is that its readers vanquished at once.
I’ve only read the first chapter of Graphs, Maps, Trees, Franco Moretti’s statistical analysis of the novel across the past few hundred years (so the Graphs bit), and it’s odd how unusual such a study is; generally math and literature don't mix. But this is exactly what makes the book valuable. Moretti noticed how literary historians cherry-pick their sources, which are either canonized works or personal favorites. It’s akin to a historian only studying the most dramatic or interesting events in history: while those are indeed important, more important is the overall trend of common action, particularly since they come before and after those key events. A lit historian may reply that there are simply too many books to read and plot, but here Moretti would rely on public data. We do know when books are published, in what country, and what genre. Using this information we can discover some fascinating stuff.
Tracking the development of the novel from the 1700s and on, we find the typical trajectory of a new art form. First it struggles to get off the ground, then a niche market grows, then a general market, then the creation of novel subgenres (fantasy, sci-fi, romance, pastoral, etc.) with niche markets for each, then one/few dominate the culture for a time before something else gains popularity. Pretty standard. But Moretti’s graphs reveal two important insights: 1.) There are dips in these trajectories, and 2.) Subgenres are born and die in very consistent 25-30 year intervals. Why? For the first question, he posits political censorship or economic conditions. If a country is censoring novels or the people are too poor to produce/consume them, then that would explain the dips. (What about bad books?) For the second, something much bigger is going on here. This time Moretti suggests generational shifts: as an audience for a genre is replaced by another so is its reading tastes. Thus books do not rise and fall based off quality, or ‘evolving taste�, or (as the formalists argued) their inability to any longer entertain, but simply because their readers die. This however is not a fully satisfactory answer, as that assumes a new generation wouldn’t inherit their parents� taste, nor would it explain resurgences in old genres. But no better guess has been brought forward.
As interesting as this data is, and it definitively opened my eyes to the value of statistics in art, the chapter has other (almost bonus) wisdom sprinkled throughout. Moretti notices how data begs interpretation, but also how that interpretation seems to pull the data too far. They work on opposite ends, and reconciling them is key to figuring out historic trends. On the other hand, he stresses the fallacy in assuming every problem has an answer. Very often people jump to conclusions because there needs to be some conclusion, when in fact the only honest response should be we don’t know. The usual historian often only looks at long-term trends or short-term events; rarely are medium-term cyclical patterns observed (for which novel genres are a perfect example). The data shows creativity is not gradual or consistent, but occurs in (assumingly generational) bursts. When confronted with the reality that people are born every second, not every ‘generation,� Moretti defines culture (not his own) as a collection of similarly-aged people who unite under an artistic style or political destabilization. In other words, share a temporal affinity. He points out how political novels have short lives; as the saying goes the engaged writer is a product of his time. And lastly, the above tests were done with film and the 25-30 year intervals were there too. What could it mean?
To summarize the data (like any good review) I think this much could be said: for one there is rarely anything new or ‘revolutionary� in art. Trends rise and fall, genres reoccur and unoccur, dominant styles oscillate (men vs. women, highbrow vs. low). Secondly the novel as a medium cannot be strictly paraphrased. It, and perhaps all art, is the system of its genres; any attempt to limit it may be ennobling but ultimately unhistorical. And while it’s true history is different from art, both can be guided by math, and that should be embraced. Data points the way, but doesn’t reveal it, and that’s where the Historian and Artist may profitably begin to squabble.
I’ve only read the first chapter of Graphs, Maps, Trees, Franco Moretti’s statistical analysis of the novel across the past few hundred years (so the Graphs bit), and it’s odd how unusual such a study is; generally math and literature don't mix. But this is exactly what makes the book valuable. Moretti noticed how literary historians cherry-pick their sources, which are either canonized works or personal favorites. It’s akin to a historian only studying the most dramatic or interesting events in history: while those are indeed important, more important is the overall trend of common action, particularly since they come before and after those key events. A lit historian may reply that there are simply too many books to read and plot, but here Moretti would rely on public data. We do know when books are published, in what country, and what genre. Using this information we can discover some fascinating stuff.
Tracking the development of the novel from the 1700s and on, we find the typical trajectory of a new art form. First it struggles to get off the ground, then a niche market grows, then a general market, then the creation of novel subgenres (fantasy, sci-fi, romance, pastoral, etc.) with niche markets for each, then one/few dominate the culture for a time before something else gains popularity. Pretty standard. But Moretti’s graphs reveal two important insights: 1.) There are dips in these trajectories, and 2.) Subgenres are born and die in very consistent 25-30 year intervals. Why? For the first question, he posits political censorship or economic conditions. If a country is censoring novels or the people are too poor to produce/consume them, then that would explain the dips. (What about bad books?) For the second, something much bigger is going on here. This time Moretti suggests generational shifts: as an audience for a genre is replaced by another so is its reading tastes. Thus books do not rise and fall based off quality, or ‘evolving taste�, or (as the formalists argued) their inability to any longer entertain, but simply because their readers die. This however is not a fully satisfactory answer, as that assumes a new generation wouldn’t inherit their parents� taste, nor would it explain resurgences in old genres. But no better guess has been brought forward.
As interesting as this data is, and it definitively opened my eyes to the value of statistics in art, the chapter has other (almost bonus) wisdom sprinkled throughout. Moretti notices how data begs interpretation, but also how that interpretation seems to pull the data too far. They work on opposite ends, and reconciling them is key to figuring out historic trends. On the other hand, he stresses the fallacy in assuming every problem has an answer. Very often people jump to conclusions because there needs to be some conclusion, when in fact the only honest response should be we don’t know. The usual historian often only looks at long-term trends or short-term events; rarely are medium-term cyclical patterns observed (for which novel genres are a perfect example). The data shows creativity is not gradual or consistent, but occurs in (assumingly generational) bursts. When confronted with the reality that people are born every second, not every ‘generation,� Moretti defines culture (not his own) as a collection of similarly-aged people who unite under an artistic style or political destabilization. In other words, share a temporal affinity. He points out how political novels have short lives; as the saying goes the engaged writer is a product of his time. And lastly, the above tests were done with film and the 25-30 year intervals were there too. What could it mean?
To summarize the data (like any good review) I think this much could be said: for one there is rarely anything new or ‘revolutionary� in art. Trends rise and fall, genres reoccur and unoccur, dominant styles oscillate (men vs. women, highbrow vs. low). Secondly the novel as a medium cannot be strictly paraphrased. It, and perhaps all art, is the system of its genres; any attempt to limit it may be ennobling but ultimately unhistorical. And while it’s true history is different from art, both can be guided by math, and that should be embraced. Data points the way, but doesn’t reveal it, and that’s where the Historian and Artist may profitably begin to squabble.
May 8, 2017
1) "The title of this short book deserves a few words of explanation. To begin with, this is an essay on literary history: literature, the old territory (more or less), unlike the drift towards other discourses so typical of recent years. But within that old territory, a new object of study: instead of concrete, individual works, a trio of artificial constructs---graphs, maps, and trees---in which the reality of the text undergoes a process of deliberate reduction and abstraction. 'Distant reading', I have once called this type of approach; where distance is however not an obstacle, but a specific form of knowledge: fewer elements, hence a sharper sense of their overall interconnection. Shapes, relations, structures. Forms. Models."
2) "History was... Pomian speaks in the past tense here, as is probably accurate in the case of social history, but certainly not for its literary counterpart, where the collector of rare and curious works, that do not repeat themselves, exceptional---and which close reading makes even more exceptional, by emphasizing the uniqueness of exactly this word and this sentence here---is still by far the dominant figure. But what would happen if literary historians, too, decided to 'shift their gaze' (Pomian again) 'from the extraordinary to the everyday, from exceptional to the large mass of facts'? What literature would we find, in 'the large mass of facts'?"
3) "Variations in a conflict that remains constant: this is what emerges at the level of the cycle---and if the conflict remains constant, then the point is not who prevails in this or that skirmish, but exactly the opposite: no victory is ever definitive, neither men nor women writers 'occupy' the British novel once and for all, and the form keeps oscillating back and forth between the two groups. And if this sounds like nothing is happening, no, what is happening is the oscillation, which allows the novel to use a double pool of talents and forms, thereby boosting its productivity, and giving it an edge over its many competitors. But this process can only be glimpsed at the level of the cycle: individual episodes tend, if anything, to conceal it, and only the abstract pattern reveals the true nature of the historical process."
4) "[The] key to this perceptual shift lies in Mitford's most typical episode: the country walk. In story after story, the young narrator leaves the village, each time in a different direction, reaches the destinations charted in figure 14, then turns around and goes home. 'When a system is free to spread its energy in space', writes Rudolf Arnheim, 'it sends out its vectors evenly all around, like the rays emanating from a source of light. The resulting... pattern is the prototype of centric composition.' Exactly: out of the free movements of Our Village's narrator, spread evenly all around like the petals of a daisy, a circular pattern crystalizes---as it does, we shall see, in all village stories, of which it represents the fundamental chronotype. But in order to see this pattern, we must first extract it from the narrative flow, and the only way to do so is with a map. Not, of course, that the map is already an explanation; but at least it shows us that there is something that needs to be explained. One step at a time.
[...]
In Mitford's walks, Barrells' 'rough circle... in which the villagers work and move' is rewritten as a space of leisure rather than work. Slow easy strolls, thoughtless, happy, in the company of a greyhound called May; all around, a countryside full of picturesque natural views, but where very few people are actually doing anything. Decorative: for each page devoted to agricultural labour, there must be twenty on flowers and trees, described with meticulous precision. If urban readers are made to share the village's perception of space, then, it's also true that this space has been thoroughly gentrified; as if Mitford had travelled forward in time, and discovered what city-dwellers will want to find in the countryside during a brief weekend visit. Not surprisingly, country walks were by far the most popular part of Our Village, and remained long in print by themselves while the rest was forgotten."
5) "The very small, and the very large; these are the forces that shape literary history. Devices and genres; not texts. Texts are certainly the real objects of literature (in the Strand Magazine you don't find 'clues' or 'detective fiction', you find Sherlock Holmes, or Hilda Wade, or The Adventures of a Man of Science); but they are not the right objects of knowledge for literary history. Take the concept of genre: usually, literary criticism approaches it in terms of what Ernst Mayr calls 'typological thinking': we choose a 'representative individual', and through it define the genre as a whole. Sherlock Holmes, say, and detective fiction; Wilhelm Meister and the Bildungsroman; you analyse Goethe's novel, and it counts as an analysis of the entire genre, because for typological thinking there is really no gap between the real object and the object of knowledge. But once a genre is visualised as a tree, the continuity between the two inevitably disappears: the genre becomes an abstract 'diversity spectrum' (Mayr again), whose internal multiplicity no individual text will ever be able to represent. And so, even 'A Scandal in Bohemia' becomes just one leaf among many: delightful, of course---but no longer entitled to stand for the genre as a whole."
6) "From the abode of noise and impropriety, where nobody was in their right place, to the asshole gringos handing him bullshit about sovereignty, democracy, and human rights. This is what comparative literature could be, if it took itself seriously as world literature, on the one hand, and as comparative morphology, on the other. Take a form, follow it from space to space, and study the reasons for its transformations: the 'opportunistic, hence unpredictable' reasons of evolution, in Ernst Mayr's words. And of course the multiplicity of spaces is the great challenge, and the curse, almost, of comparative literature: but it is also its peculiar strength, because it is only in such a wide, non-homogeneous geography that some fundamental principles of cultural history become manifest. As, here, the dependence of morphological novelty on spacial discontinuity: 'allopatric speciation', to quote Ernst Mayr one more time: a new species (or at any rate a new formal arrangement), arising when a population migrates into a new homeland, and must quickly change in order to survive. Just like free indirect style when it moves into Petersberg, Aci Trezza, Dublin, Ciudad Trujillo..."
2) "History was... Pomian speaks in the past tense here, as is probably accurate in the case of social history, but certainly not for its literary counterpart, where the collector of rare and curious works, that do not repeat themselves, exceptional---and which close reading makes even more exceptional, by emphasizing the uniqueness of exactly this word and this sentence here---is still by far the dominant figure. But what would happen if literary historians, too, decided to 'shift their gaze' (Pomian again) 'from the extraordinary to the everyday, from exceptional to the large mass of facts'? What literature would we find, in 'the large mass of facts'?"
3) "Variations in a conflict that remains constant: this is what emerges at the level of the cycle---and if the conflict remains constant, then the point is not who prevails in this or that skirmish, but exactly the opposite: no victory is ever definitive, neither men nor women writers 'occupy' the British novel once and for all, and the form keeps oscillating back and forth between the two groups. And if this sounds like nothing is happening, no, what is happening is the oscillation, which allows the novel to use a double pool of talents and forms, thereby boosting its productivity, and giving it an edge over its many competitors. But this process can only be glimpsed at the level of the cycle: individual episodes tend, if anything, to conceal it, and only the abstract pattern reveals the true nature of the historical process."
4) "[The] key to this perceptual shift lies in Mitford's most typical episode: the country walk. In story after story, the young narrator leaves the village, each time in a different direction, reaches the destinations charted in figure 14, then turns around and goes home. 'When a system is free to spread its energy in space', writes Rudolf Arnheim, 'it sends out its vectors evenly all around, like the rays emanating from a source of light. The resulting... pattern is the prototype of centric composition.' Exactly: out of the free movements of Our Village's narrator, spread evenly all around like the petals of a daisy, a circular pattern crystalizes---as it does, we shall see, in all village stories, of which it represents the fundamental chronotype. But in order to see this pattern, we must first extract it from the narrative flow, and the only way to do so is with a map. Not, of course, that the map is already an explanation; but at least it shows us that there is something that needs to be explained. One step at a time.
[...]
In Mitford's walks, Barrells' 'rough circle... in which the villagers work and move' is rewritten as a space of leisure rather than work. Slow easy strolls, thoughtless, happy, in the company of a greyhound called May; all around, a countryside full of picturesque natural views, but where very few people are actually doing anything. Decorative: for each page devoted to agricultural labour, there must be twenty on flowers and trees, described with meticulous precision. If urban readers are made to share the village's perception of space, then, it's also true that this space has been thoroughly gentrified; as if Mitford had travelled forward in time, and discovered what city-dwellers will want to find in the countryside during a brief weekend visit. Not surprisingly, country walks were by far the most popular part of Our Village, and remained long in print by themselves while the rest was forgotten."
5) "The very small, and the very large; these are the forces that shape literary history. Devices and genres; not texts. Texts are certainly the real objects of literature (in the Strand Magazine you don't find 'clues' or 'detective fiction', you find Sherlock Holmes, or Hilda Wade, or The Adventures of a Man of Science); but they are not the right objects of knowledge for literary history. Take the concept of genre: usually, literary criticism approaches it in terms of what Ernst Mayr calls 'typological thinking': we choose a 'representative individual', and through it define the genre as a whole. Sherlock Holmes, say, and detective fiction; Wilhelm Meister and the Bildungsroman; you analyse Goethe's novel, and it counts as an analysis of the entire genre, because for typological thinking there is really no gap between the real object and the object of knowledge. But once a genre is visualised as a tree, the continuity between the two inevitably disappears: the genre becomes an abstract 'diversity spectrum' (Mayr again), whose internal multiplicity no individual text will ever be able to represent. And so, even 'A Scandal in Bohemia' becomes just one leaf among many: delightful, of course---but no longer entitled to stand for the genre as a whole."
6) "From the abode of noise and impropriety, where nobody was in their right place, to the asshole gringos handing him bullshit about sovereignty, democracy, and human rights. This is what comparative literature could be, if it took itself seriously as world literature, on the one hand, and as comparative morphology, on the other. Take a form, follow it from space to space, and study the reasons for its transformations: the 'opportunistic, hence unpredictable' reasons of evolution, in Ernst Mayr's words. And of course the multiplicity of spaces is the great challenge, and the curse, almost, of comparative literature: but it is also its peculiar strength, because it is only in such a wide, non-homogeneous geography that some fundamental principles of cultural history become manifest. As, here, the dependence of morphological novelty on spacial discontinuity: 'allopatric speciation', to quote Ernst Mayr one more time: a new species (or at any rate a new formal arrangement), arising when a population migrates into a new homeland, and must quickly change in order to survive. Just like free indirect style when it moves into Petersberg, Aci Trezza, Dublin, Ciudad Trujillo..."
September 13, 2007
Literary insanity-- what happens when an autistic savant plays with literary history as seen through Darwin's Theory of Evolution? Moretti infuriates many with a "scientific" method for reading Literary History at a great distance, so that genre trends form the branches and "nodes" of a tree. While he doesn't advocate abandoning close-reading, it is hard not to feel like the transendence of an individual novel is lost in all the statistical grouping and classifying. I do love the last chapter and especially it's definition of "free and indirect discourse" as "emotion with distance"; ive used the term in papers but never properly, until now. It is astonishing to share his vantage point on the movement of this generic formulation, the voice that sees both the interior and the exterior of a characters world, through stages of irony and protest.
January 8, 2010
References to Moretti's discourse on the visualization and analysis of bulk knowledge regarding literary history have become more and more pervasive in the academic region known as the Digital Humanities. For good reason: Moretti's bold vision of literary research using spatial and statistical analytical methods bears fruit in several case studies throughout the work, both in following long-term trends, such as the popularity of the novel in various countries, as well as focused spatio-conceptual mapping of worlds presented within novels and series of novels. His distant reading technique has drawn the ire of established, close-reading academics, but his theoretical considerations are both far-reaching and ever more attractive to a wide body of humanities researchers using digital methods.
May 7, 2014
Although I don't think Moretti's "distant reading" approach can (or should) replace close reading, I do think it has something to offer to literary studies, especially as it can visualize and spatialize mass quantities of texts through the use of graphs, maps, and trees. I appreciated how heavily Moretti relied on examples throughout his argument, and though many of his claims need further research in order to be convincing, they provoke interesting questions.
The main drawback to this kind of macro work, however, is that, aside from maps, it's not exactly doable on the individual level - graphs and trees require a lot of data collection and not all university english departments are set up for something like that.
The main drawback to this kind of macro work, however, is that, aside from maps, it's not exactly doable on the individual level - graphs and trees require a lot of data collection and not all university english departments are set up for something like that.
September 8, 2007
"Graphs" is by far the most interesting section.
May 24, 2010
Fascinating but rather esoteric and kind of a fad.
November 17, 2013
An interesting perspective on studies of literary history conveyed with an impenetrably pretentious style. Annoying to read.
March 21, 2017
Not convinced.
June 30, 2022
He's making some points.
I'm not 100% sure what they are.
But he is making them.
I'm not 100% sure what they are.
But he is making them.
October 22, 2014
Close Reading vs Distant Reading
The above thought has been drifting around my mind since I started my degree. What do the two terms mean to literary analysis? Is one better than the other? Why are so many people angry about this new idea of ‘Distant Reading�.
Distant Reading is a term coined by Italian literary scholar Franco Moretti. He strives to analyze literature by more scientific means. In the opening pages of his book Graph, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History he states that the traditional way of looking at literary history is extremely limited, and as scholars we should broaden our horizons by adapting techniques used in natural and social sciences. His term ‘distant reading� suggests instead of carefully looking at one particular text to gleam deeper meaning scholars should collect and analyze texts on a massive scale. It is a type of big data analytic for literature. There is no way we can read each and every book that has ever been published, so why not look at books on a larger scale. Why don’t we look at them as data instead of individual pieces of writing. Moretti suggests this will show us so much more about the history of literature than close reading ever could.
What is so wrong with close reading?
As a former English major I know the art of close reading well. You take one, or a couple, pieces of literature from a time and place and you carefully analyze every detail out of if until you understand its meaning and place in historical time. There can be great depth in close reading, but it does have its limits. Every first year English student will read ‘Tyger� and ‘The Lamb� by William Blake, but they will not get to read ‘Ah! Sunflower�. They will read ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn� by John Keats, but not � When I have fears that I may cease to be�. There is an art to literary study that is beautiful, but chooses what we read and what we don’t read? What if we are missing out on some over looked treasure that slipped through the academic cracks? Maybe close reading is too narrow and too over done that we are missing out on so much more that we can’t see in literary history.
Is distant reading better then?
From what I have read so far by Moretti, along with two articles about his work, I think that distant reading is not necessarily better than close reading–though he would have a different opinion. In his graphs for tracking genres it is interesting how there is a pattern of what is popular when and for how long, and again in male vs female authors there is a variation of which sex dominates writing at any given time. These graphs open up new questions to ask why this is happening, and inspire the further investigation to why–but this is when a distant reading needs to become a bit closer. For me there needs to be more than just data. As I briefly mentioned earlier, there is art in literary history and science tends to be the opposite of art. By taking an entire history of literature and turning it into computer data to by analyzed you are pulling away from the depth and meaning that a close reading can give you. In the New York Times article ‘An Attempt to Discover the Laws of Literature�, by Joshua Rothman, he states that Moretti is looking at literature the way an astronaut is looking at Earth from Mars–too far away to really understand all the details. But for Moretti “Knowing is not reading� and Rothman concludes his article by stating that the majority will continue to enjoy our reading while Moretti is up on Mars discovering new things. I don’t agree with Rothman’s idea of just leaving the literary astronaut alone with his crazy ideas. Why not listen to them? Why not give the distant reading idea a real try. Maybe this cold science has some warmth and colour to it? We might learn something new, and is that not why we became students and scholars in the first place?
It is very interesting to see literary history from a wider angle, and I can see how this can improve scholarly research, but I don’t think we should just throw away the practice of close reading. I think that this is not a case of one versus the other, but of one and the other. How can distant reading improve research in literary history? How can close reading compliment distant reading? If we all do our parts as universal learners and keep our minds open and hungry maybe we will actually learn something new. And how bad could that be?
I have to admit I found the last two chapters hard to unpack. I have never thought of literature from the angel Moretti is addressing it. The main reason I was able to engage with the first chapter was because I could wrap my head easily around the notion of distant reading. I can see how it could reveal new aspects of the history of literature we have not see before, and I stand by my opinion that it is a good companion–not replacement–to close reading. I suppose some of my confusion is wrapped up in how the next two chapters seem to be more alike closer reading than distant reading.
Let me attempt to explain.
In the chapter about Maps, Moretti looks at a couple series of stories. One in particular is Our Village, by Mary Mitford, which is a short series of stories that focus on a narrator who lives in a small village published in the mid 1800s. I have always found it hard to read a literary critic of a book I have not read. I feel like a blind person is explaining to me what an elephant looks like, and I have never seen an elephant to know if what is being explained is entirely whole–or true. This was the first problem with my intellectual limits with this chapter. I also found it hard to understand his maps, or diagrams. I have never seen most of these diagrams before and therefore have a very untrained eye. When switching between trying to follow his thoughts, to trying to decode the diagrams, I felt a bit lost. Since this is all new to me I will have to take it upon myself to research further, listen carefully, and maybe learn a thing or two–is that not why one goes to school?
I think I may also have been a bit disheartened by Moretti’s take on a literary map. As a visual person, and as one who enjoys to create visual pieces of art from time to time, I was a bit underwhelmed by his diagrams. At the same time I was reading an article for another class called “Creating a Landscape of Memory: The Potential of the Humanities GIS�, by David Bodenhammer. In this article he explains the idea of deep mapping, a post-modern technique of creating a multi-leveled memory map. Bodenhammer puts forth the suggestion that Humanists should use GIS like a deep map and create mutli-media, multilevel, complex innovative maps of literature and the like. The ideas that floated around my head were full of lights, bells, and colours. Then I looked at Moretti’s diagram maps and I felt slightly cheated. I like the idea of looking at the space created in a piece of literature, but I think Moretti’s approach lacks the breath that makes literature show engaging.
The art of it.
Then I read the chapter on Trees, and I was even more confused. I thought Moretti was against the idea of close reading, but the entire chapter is a series of close readings in an attempt to create a tree diagram that tackles the evolution of literary style� he focuses mainly on free indirect style. It is in this chapter he seems to be more connected to the romance, the pulse of the artistic life of literature. He opens the chapter with an introduction and close reading of Darwin’s tree on divergence of character in his theory of evolution and tries to create trees for literature. I have little to no experience in reading trees, so I lack the proper background to state if these diagrams are successful or not, but I think my confusions and musings come to a good conclusion.
Bare with me.
Moretti is suggesting we view literary history from a perspective we are not used to. He is very blunt, and slightly stubborn, with his ideas on how and why this is. Though I am still trying to understand parts of his book, and some parts I do understand I do not wholly agree with, I do agree with his overall thesis.
We need to change the way we look at literature in order to learn something new.
The above thought has been drifting around my mind since I started my degree. What do the two terms mean to literary analysis? Is one better than the other? Why are so many people angry about this new idea of ‘Distant Reading�.
Distant Reading is a term coined by Italian literary scholar Franco Moretti. He strives to analyze literature by more scientific means. In the opening pages of his book Graph, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History he states that the traditional way of looking at literary history is extremely limited, and as scholars we should broaden our horizons by adapting techniques used in natural and social sciences. His term ‘distant reading� suggests instead of carefully looking at one particular text to gleam deeper meaning scholars should collect and analyze texts on a massive scale. It is a type of big data analytic for literature. There is no way we can read each and every book that has ever been published, so why not look at books on a larger scale. Why don’t we look at them as data instead of individual pieces of writing. Moretti suggests this will show us so much more about the history of literature than close reading ever could.
What is so wrong with close reading?
As a former English major I know the art of close reading well. You take one, or a couple, pieces of literature from a time and place and you carefully analyze every detail out of if until you understand its meaning and place in historical time. There can be great depth in close reading, but it does have its limits. Every first year English student will read ‘Tyger� and ‘The Lamb� by William Blake, but they will not get to read ‘Ah! Sunflower�. They will read ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn� by John Keats, but not � When I have fears that I may cease to be�. There is an art to literary study that is beautiful, but chooses what we read and what we don’t read? What if we are missing out on some over looked treasure that slipped through the academic cracks? Maybe close reading is too narrow and too over done that we are missing out on so much more that we can’t see in literary history.
Is distant reading better then?
From what I have read so far by Moretti, along with two articles about his work, I think that distant reading is not necessarily better than close reading–though he would have a different opinion. In his graphs for tracking genres it is interesting how there is a pattern of what is popular when and for how long, and again in male vs female authors there is a variation of which sex dominates writing at any given time. These graphs open up new questions to ask why this is happening, and inspire the further investigation to why–but this is when a distant reading needs to become a bit closer. For me there needs to be more than just data. As I briefly mentioned earlier, there is art in literary history and science tends to be the opposite of art. By taking an entire history of literature and turning it into computer data to by analyzed you are pulling away from the depth and meaning that a close reading can give you. In the New York Times article ‘An Attempt to Discover the Laws of Literature�, by Joshua Rothman, he states that Moretti is looking at literature the way an astronaut is looking at Earth from Mars–too far away to really understand all the details. But for Moretti “Knowing is not reading� and Rothman concludes his article by stating that the majority will continue to enjoy our reading while Moretti is up on Mars discovering new things. I don’t agree with Rothman’s idea of just leaving the literary astronaut alone with his crazy ideas. Why not listen to them? Why not give the distant reading idea a real try. Maybe this cold science has some warmth and colour to it? We might learn something new, and is that not why we became students and scholars in the first place?
It is very interesting to see literary history from a wider angle, and I can see how this can improve scholarly research, but I don’t think we should just throw away the practice of close reading. I think that this is not a case of one versus the other, but of one and the other. How can distant reading improve research in literary history? How can close reading compliment distant reading? If we all do our parts as universal learners and keep our minds open and hungry maybe we will actually learn something new. And how bad could that be?
I have to admit I found the last two chapters hard to unpack. I have never thought of literature from the angel Moretti is addressing it. The main reason I was able to engage with the first chapter was because I could wrap my head easily around the notion of distant reading. I can see how it could reveal new aspects of the history of literature we have not see before, and I stand by my opinion that it is a good companion–not replacement–to close reading. I suppose some of my confusion is wrapped up in how the next two chapters seem to be more alike closer reading than distant reading.
Let me attempt to explain.
In the chapter about Maps, Moretti looks at a couple series of stories. One in particular is Our Village, by Mary Mitford, which is a short series of stories that focus on a narrator who lives in a small village published in the mid 1800s. I have always found it hard to read a literary critic of a book I have not read. I feel like a blind person is explaining to me what an elephant looks like, and I have never seen an elephant to know if what is being explained is entirely whole–or true. This was the first problem with my intellectual limits with this chapter. I also found it hard to understand his maps, or diagrams. I have never seen most of these diagrams before and therefore have a very untrained eye. When switching between trying to follow his thoughts, to trying to decode the diagrams, I felt a bit lost. Since this is all new to me I will have to take it upon myself to research further, listen carefully, and maybe learn a thing or two–is that not why one goes to school?
I think I may also have been a bit disheartened by Moretti’s take on a literary map. As a visual person, and as one who enjoys to create visual pieces of art from time to time, I was a bit underwhelmed by his diagrams. At the same time I was reading an article for another class called “Creating a Landscape of Memory: The Potential of the Humanities GIS�, by David Bodenhammer. In this article he explains the idea of deep mapping, a post-modern technique of creating a multi-leveled memory map. Bodenhammer puts forth the suggestion that Humanists should use GIS like a deep map and create mutli-media, multilevel, complex innovative maps of literature and the like. The ideas that floated around my head were full of lights, bells, and colours. Then I looked at Moretti’s diagram maps and I felt slightly cheated. I like the idea of looking at the space created in a piece of literature, but I think Moretti’s approach lacks the breath that makes literature show engaging.
The art of it.
Then I read the chapter on Trees, and I was even more confused. I thought Moretti was against the idea of close reading, but the entire chapter is a series of close readings in an attempt to create a tree diagram that tackles the evolution of literary style� he focuses mainly on free indirect style. It is in this chapter he seems to be more connected to the romance, the pulse of the artistic life of literature. He opens the chapter with an introduction and close reading of Darwin’s tree on divergence of character in his theory of evolution and tries to create trees for literature. I have little to no experience in reading trees, so I lack the proper background to state if these diagrams are successful or not, but I think my confusions and musings come to a good conclusion.
Bare with me.
Moretti is suggesting we view literary history from a perspective we are not used to. He is very blunt, and slightly stubborn, with his ideas on how and why this is. Though I am still trying to understand parts of his book, and some parts I do understand I do not wholly agree with, I do agree with his overall thesis.
We need to change the way we look at literature in order to learn something new.
January 26, 2019
A nice idea, but a short book that was WAY TOO LONG even as a short book. Not sure why Moretti pretends to be the first person doing anything like he’s doing, and I think literary studies donning scientific tools (but refusing to be a bit more distant and clinical and scientific in how they interpret that data) is nauseating and is a huge part of why the humanities are an easy target. I read this for grad school for a critical theory class, and we’ve been talking a lot about interdisciplinary approaches, and sociology has gotten thrown under the bus each week by my colleagues, but I can’t help but remember how much more rigorous my sociological training was (I left my soci major two courses shy of fulfilled when I transitioned fully into English), and how much more data-literate and sensible all the writing was. If you want to think about broader procurers, James Bridle’s “New Dark Age� has some really great thoughts on optometry computing, and even reading Kenneth Goldsmith’s Uncreative Writing engages me more in thinking about data sets and their relationship to a wider literary picture (including their delivery). If Moretti had meaningfully collaborated with a computer scientist or just had any degree of someone else holding this accountable it would have been a bearable book. I would recommend skipping this title.
March 19, 2019
Interesting stuff that I think is of clear value, but is also no where close to completely revolutionizing literary study. There are certain questions this type of analysis can answer that others can’t, and I think Moretti is right to attack “theory� at times, but in no way can this replace formal reading/exegesis (which Morettti acknowledges). I thought the 3rd section on trees was the most interesting - both in explaining Sherlock Holmes success (can it help us answer other aesthetic questions?) and the attempt at tracking the development of free indirect (though I would like to know more about why those developments occurred when they did). The first section on the popularity of novels/genres over time was also good, particularly the theory of generational change and how that relates to genre turnover (though again I’d like to find out more). The second section on maps I least understood the relevance of, though the one on Balzac’s novels was interesting. Overall good work, might check out some of his other stuff.
May 31, 2019
As an opening statement: This is a book for someone who is coming from an area of literary criticism, history, rhetoric, or similar. This book is not meant for someone who is pretty well versed in quantitative social science/information methods. The reason I start here is that if your expectation is that this is going to teach you methods for literary work, you would be wrong. This is an argument to a field that largely dismisses quantitative methods. Anyone who is educated on quantitative methods will see this book as fairly obviously clear.
That said, this book does a good job of putting together some excellent references and cases to argue why literary fields could borrow methods from other more quantitative and mixed methods fields by using references within and important to literary criticism.
Also, it makes for a nice checkpoint for someone who is wanting to work relative to these fields, already knows the methods, but doesn't know the typical methods of literary and rhetorical fields.
That said, this book does a good job of putting together some excellent references and cases to argue why literary fields could borrow methods from other more quantitative and mixed methods fields by using references within and important to literary criticism.
Also, it makes for a nice checkpoint for someone who is wanting to work relative to these fields, already knows the methods, but doesn't know the typical methods of literary and rhetorical fields.
April 18, 2021
Hard to rate this book. I absolutely love the way Moretti writes and I adore his enthusiasm for the data he discovers, but sometimes that enthusiasm blinds him. The book starts out very strong with graphs, is good in in the maps and really flounders in the trees portion (I'm sorry, Moretti, but the metaphor just doesn't work). Even in the portions I liked, I feel like Moretti flubs both by being uncritical of his sources (treating genres like discrete and objective things, for instance) and by not following through with the statiscal anylisis (where are the tests to see if the correlations are significant?). I still absolutely recommend this, but it does have several flaws, which are understandable given the fact that this was one of his earliest books as part of this larger research project.
September 1, 2018
I appreciate Moretti's starting point: we must be open to new ways of looking at things, specifically literary theory. However, his most thought-provoking statements are scattered throughout the book and obscured by overly specific examples - nay, rabbit trails - that seem to support his vision. Rather than taking an unemotional look at textual data, this book actually feels extremely biased. Furthermore, Moretti excuses his flimsy arguments at the end of the book by claiming further exploration is needed. I think the weakness of this book isn’t due to a lack of research, but due to Moretti’s unfocused writing.
December 7, 2020
This has been on the shelf for a looong time. A shortish read, but one packed with things to think about. I admit I wasn't approaching it from the literary analysis point of view, but with an eye on some future work on diaries. Moretti's style is sometimes a little elliptical, but I'm glad I finally read it. I will follow-up at some point with the Jonathan Goodwin "Responses�" book. It's also prompted me to put on the pile Manuel Lima's The Book of Trees.
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