Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History

Critical Writing
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Year: 
2007
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ISBN: 
978-1844670260
Pages: 
119
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All Rights reserved
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Abstract (in English): 

In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. In place of the traditionally selective literary canon of a few hundred texts, Moretti offers charts, maps and time lines, developing the idea of “distant reading” into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, in which 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.

(Source: Verso online catalog.)

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Cover of Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History

Teaching Resource using this Critical Writing:

Resourcesort ascending Teaching Resource Type Author Year
Digital Humanities in Practice (DIKULT 207, UiB, Fall 2019) Syllabus Scott Rettberg, Hannah Ackermans, Patricia Tomaszek 2019
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Eric Dean Rasmussen