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Distant Reading
How does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficients? The essays in Distant Reading led to a new and often contested paradigm of literary analysis. In presenting them here Franco Moretti reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, the theoretical influences over his work, and explores the polemics that have often developed around his positions.
From the evolutionary model of “Modern European Literature,” through the geo-cultural insights of “Conjectures of World Literature” and “Planet Hollywood,” to the quantitative findings of “Style, inc.” and the abstract patterns of “Network Theory, Plot Analysis,” the book follows two decades of conceptual development, organizing them around the metaphor of “distant reading,” that has come to define—well beyond the wildest expectations of its author—a growing field of unorthodox literary studies.
From the evolutionary model of “Modern European Literature,” through the geo-cultural insights of “Conjectures of World Literature” and “Planet Hollywood,” to the quantitative findings of “Style, inc.” and the abstract patterns of “Network Theory, Plot Analysis,” the book follows two decades of conceptual development, organizing them around the metaphor of “distant reading,” that has come to define—well beyond the wildest expectations of its author—a growing field of unorthodox literary studies.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 4, 2013
42 people are currently reading
764 people want to read
About the author
Franco Moretti
45 books99 followersFranco 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 33 reviews
February 26, 2015
This book is made of 10 essays that attack, from different angles, issues that obsess the author:
- the existence of a 'world literature', as a huge set of extremely diverse styles, forms and stories and, later with the globalization, as an organism or system. Franco Moretti speculates on how this system works, what are the mechanisms for new literary production, specially in the clash of the center and the periphery. He uses archetypes and metaphors brought from evolutionary biology, such as diffusion (wave), divergence (tree), confluence (anastomosis),...
- the problem for the literary critic theory, that can't access the entire world literature corpus. A critic can only read an extremely tiny percentage of all those books, and usually chooses what is considered canonical, thus leaving outside the "great unread".
- the possible solutions to this problem, what he calls 'distant reading', "distance [...] is a condition of knowledge: it allows you to focus on units that are much smaller or much larger than the text"
- the role of the market as an space or environment that shapes literary evolution, genre creation and successful literary artifacts discovery (again, under an evolutionary biology perspective)
Among the things that makes this book extremely interesting is the fact that the author wanders through difficult issues, often invalidating or revisiting previous ideas (he's playing, he's inviting to play). For instance, one of the first essays is 'Conjectures on World Literature'; this essay was published and received several critics; another essay in the book, 'More Conjectures' introduces many of these critics, the ones the author reckons as more interesting, he admits he was wrong in some cases, defends other points of views, and the whole feels as a true conversation, a one the author is enjoying. To some extent is like reading an epistolary novel. These conversations: with other critics, with himself, and between essays that constantly return to the same issues, makes the book a system itself, a network.
Franco Moretti has been criticized for proposing an approach to books that no longer requires reading (that is: enjoying) books. I think this is just a provocation, a "social artifact" (in his own terms) to get attention to the issues he points. What he actually proposes is an "extended reading", that also requires reading, but that goes beyond by focusing on the small (identifiable artifacts contained in books) and the big (corpora of books that can't be read by a single human). As an example from the book: Moretti analyzes a small subset of detective novels written in a single decade of the XIX century, "The total came to 108 (plus another fifty items or so [...]), and--it took time. But I have read them all". If you thought Moretti doesn't read books...
- the existence of a 'world literature', as a huge set of extremely diverse styles, forms and stories and, later with the globalization, as an organism or system. Franco Moretti speculates on how this system works, what are the mechanisms for new literary production, specially in the clash of the center and the periphery. He uses archetypes and metaphors brought from evolutionary biology, such as diffusion (wave), divergence (tree), confluence (anastomosis),...
- the problem for the literary critic theory, that can't access the entire world literature corpus. A critic can only read an extremely tiny percentage of all those books, and usually chooses what is considered canonical, thus leaving outside the "great unread".
- the possible solutions to this problem, what he calls 'distant reading', "distance [...] is a condition of knowledge: it allows you to focus on units that are much smaller or much larger than the text"
- the role of the market as an space or environment that shapes literary evolution, genre creation and successful literary artifacts discovery (again, under an evolutionary biology perspective)
Among the things that makes this book extremely interesting is the fact that the author wanders through difficult issues, often invalidating or revisiting previous ideas (he's playing, he's inviting to play). For instance, one of the first essays is 'Conjectures on World Literature'; this essay was published and received several critics; another essay in the book, 'More Conjectures' introduces many of these critics, the ones the author reckons as more interesting, he admits he was wrong in some cases, defends other points of views, and the whole feels as a true conversation, a one the author is enjoying. To some extent is like reading an epistolary novel. These conversations: with other critics, with himself, and between essays that constantly return to the same issues, makes the book a system itself, a network.
Franco Moretti has been criticized for proposing an approach to books that no longer requires reading (that is: enjoying) books. I think this is just a provocation, a "social artifact" (in his own terms) to get attention to the issues he points. What he actually proposes is an "extended reading", that also requires reading, but that goes beyond by focusing on the small (identifiable artifacts contained in books) and the big (corpora of books that can't be read by a single human). As an example from the book: Moretti analyzes a small subset of detective novels written in a single decade of the XIX century, "The total came to 108 (plus another fifty items or so [...]), and--it took time. But I have read them all". If you thought Moretti doesn't read books...
February 28, 2014
This book is made up of a series of essays of varying quality. Those that I found most difficult—and that’s on a content level; the prose is uniformly breezy—tend to feel dashed-off and imprecise. These parts of the book reminded me more than a little bit of Thomas Friedman: the seminars in Italy (and New Haven, and New York), the other people who provide so many of the ideas, the flat world, the persistent triumphalism. I realize that pointing this out might seem like a low blow; but these markers are all over the book, and I’m curious what else we’re supposed to do with them. In any event, what results from all of this vertiginousness is a discussion of books that rarely descends from the most frustrating levels of abstraction.
And this abstraction presents a sort of literary ethical problem: “town loves a winner” seems, through Darwinism, the book’s unacknowledged motto. Its analysis of detective fiction, for example, seeks to figure out what Conan Doyle got right, and other authors got wrong, to make a sellable fiction; the text is rather brutally uninterested in texts that did not “survive” to another generation. But books, it seems to me, are interesting for reasons that make them unlike biological organisms: the fact that they can sit unacknowledged for hundreds of years, unread, and then return to readerly consciousness. Of course, most books won’t; but many things that we regard as canonical spend hundreds (in some cases thousands) of years outside of wide consideration, or any consideration at all. There’s a sort of tautology of the present (probably a better term for that) at work: what survived is what we’re reading now, as evinced by us reading it now. But if this book were written in the twenties, for example, we would have seen Henry James at a low ebb; one must assume that other things not now canonical will float back up to wide attention, eventually, one way or another.
The survive/fail model has analogues in what I see as another persistent flaw: the book’s strident phrase-making, which often bulldozes over historical specificity. The statement “Apart from Dickens, English narrative draws its rhythms and its problems from the countryside” is, in a sense, true. The opposite is also true: that the industrialized cities, where these novels tended increasingly to be read and written, drove these novels’ development. This points I think to a basic problem: how are interested are we in a degree of abstraction that creates these nearly half-true examples?
Making the possibility of saying anything final about the book is its twists and turns in acknowledging disagreements without really responding to any of them. No objection I raise isn’t at least considered by the book; many of these objections are even apologized for. I have to work with the assumption that the modes of analysis that take up, oh, 75% of the book are the book’s actual subject.
The “Planet Hollywood” essay is interesting, if (again) a bit simplifying. The “Style, Inc.” essay on data from 7,000 titles is fascinating. But the whole thing is so breezy and under-argued that I found myself more annoyed than stimulated by anything written in it, with a few exceptions.
It’s fortuitous that one of the books I finished most recently was July Stone Peters’ “Theatre of the Book,” which (I think successfully) completes many of the things that this book calls for, particularly its framing of a genre across multiple national traditions. I can’t imagine how much time that book took to write; this one, as a collection of hurried essays, feels like it was itself compiled in a hurry. Peters’ book is happy to luxuriate time on obscure and “lost” texts, making many of these feel in urgent need of rediscovery in one sense or another. “Distant Reading” seemed instead to be bringing data analysis to the less-than-urgent problem of telling us why our canonical texts won their status as canonical; only at its most careful moments does it, always intriguingly, really begin to grapple with the unfamiliar.
The book itself acknowledges that these essays are stand-ins for longer pieces that could, and should, be written using these topics and methodologies. But this is literary criticism as wild west territory grab: getting there first, staking a wobbly claim to territory, then pointing out that others might do the (harder, less glamorous) work. We have here the Zissou, but not the team; in their absence, what we have is unproven indeed.
And this abstraction presents a sort of literary ethical problem: “town loves a winner” seems, through Darwinism, the book’s unacknowledged motto. Its analysis of detective fiction, for example, seeks to figure out what Conan Doyle got right, and other authors got wrong, to make a sellable fiction; the text is rather brutally uninterested in texts that did not “survive” to another generation. But books, it seems to me, are interesting for reasons that make them unlike biological organisms: the fact that they can sit unacknowledged for hundreds of years, unread, and then return to readerly consciousness. Of course, most books won’t; but many things that we regard as canonical spend hundreds (in some cases thousands) of years outside of wide consideration, or any consideration at all. There’s a sort of tautology of the present (probably a better term for that) at work: what survived is what we’re reading now, as evinced by us reading it now. But if this book were written in the twenties, for example, we would have seen Henry James at a low ebb; one must assume that other things not now canonical will float back up to wide attention, eventually, one way or another.
The survive/fail model has analogues in what I see as another persistent flaw: the book’s strident phrase-making, which often bulldozes over historical specificity. The statement “Apart from Dickens, English narrative draws its rhythms and its problems from the countryside” is, in a sense, true. The opposite is also true: that the industrialized cities, where these novels tended increasingly to be read and written, drove these novels’ development. This points I think to a basic problem: how are interested are we in a degree of abstraction that creates these nearly half-true examples?
Making the possibility of saying anything final about the book is its twists and turns in acknowledging disagreements without really responding to any of them. No objection I raise isn’t at least considered by the book; many of these objections are even apologized for. I have to work with the assumption that the modes of analysis that take up, oh, 75% of the book are the book’s actual subject.
The “Planet Hollywood” essay is interesting, if (again) a bit simplifying. The “Style, Inc.” essay on data from 7,000 titles is fascinating. But the whole thing is so breezy and under-argued that I found myself more annoyed than stimulated by anything written in it, with a few exceptions.
It’s fortuitous that one of the books I finished most recently was July Stone Peters’ “Theatre of the Book,” which (I think successfully) completes many of the things that this book calls for, particularly its framing of a genre across multiple national traditions. I can’t imagine how much time that book took to write; this one, as a collection of hurried essays, feels like it was itself compiled in a hurry. Peters’ book is happy to luxuriate time on obscure and “lost” texts, making many of these feel in urgent need of rediscovery in one sense or another. “Distant Reading” seemed instead to be bringing data analysis to the less-than-urgent problem of telling us why our canonical texts won their status as canonical; only at its most careful moments does it, always intriguingly, really begin to grapple with the unfamiliar.
The book itself acknowledges that these essays are stand-ins for longer pieces that could, and should, be written using these topics and methodologies. But this is literary criticism as wild west territory grab: getting there first, staking a wobbly claim to territory, then pointing out that others might do the (harder, less glamorous) work. We have here the Zissou, but not the team; in their absence, what we have is unproven indeed.
March 30, 2014
Tengo dos opiniones sobre este libro:
1) La positiva: una argumentación convincente sobre la necesidad de métodos cuantitativos (sin renunciar a la aproximación cualitativa más clásica)en el estudio de la literatura. En el ámbito de la historia de la literatura, el de Moretti, su propuesta del uso de una metodología similar a la paleontológica es convincente. En lo mejor del libro, los dos estudios aplicados. En el primero analiza la evolución de la longitud de los títulos en los siglos XVIII y XIX donde el mercado toma el papel de presión de selección; un buen estudio al que le falta un grado para parecerme excelente. En el segundo, analiza la contribución de los personajes a la estructura Hamlet mediante grafos. Prometedor es que, por los casos que presenta, la aplicación de la metodología cuantitativa ni siquiera a arañado la superficie.
2) La negativa: la lamentable presentación de los resultados cuantitativos, al nivel de un mal estudiante de bachillerato. Si Moretti pretende convencer a alguien del valor de la metodología cuantitativa, más le vale cambiar el esquema y ser mucho, mucho más riguroso.
En definitiva, argumentos convincentes de una propuesta interesante, pero una exposición lastrada por un esquema nada cuantitativo, que resta rigor a la prueba. Me quedo con esta cita:
"This process of reduction and abstraction [of a text] makes the model obviously much less than the original object, but also, in another sense, much more than it, because a model allows you to see the underlying structures of a complex object. It's like an X-ray: suddenly you see the region (...) otherwise hidden"
1) La positiva: una argumentación convincente sobre la necesidad de métodos cuantitativos (sin renunciar a la aproximación cualitativa más clásica)en el estudio de la literatura. En el ámbito de la historia de la literatura, el de Moretti, su propuesta del uso de una metodología similar a la paleontológica es convincente. En lo mejor del libro, los dos estudios aplicados. En el primero analiza la evolución de la longitud de los títulos en los siglos XVIII y XIX donde el mercado toma el papel de presión de selección; un buen estudio al que le falta un grado para parecerme excelente. En el segundo, analiza la contribución de los personajes a la estructura Hamlet mediante grafos. Prometedor es que, por los casos que presenta, la aplicación de la metodología cuantitativa ni siquiera a arañado la superficie.
2) La negativa: la lamentable presentación de los resultados cuantitativos, al nivel de un mal estudiante de bachillerato. Si Moretti pretende convencer a alguien del valor de la metodología cuantitativa, más le vale cambiar el esquema y ser mucho, mucho más riguroso.
En definitiva, argumentos convincentes de una propuesta interesante, pero una exposición lastrada por un esquema nada cuantitativo, que resta rigor a la prueba. Me quedo con esta cita:
"This process of reduction and abstraction [of a text] makes the model obviously much less than the original object, but also, in another sense, much more than it, because a model allows you to see the underlying structures of a complex object. It's like an X-ray: suddenly you see the region (...) otherwise hidden"
April 25, 2020
Yeah. I liked this. I'm keen on his innovative approach to how we talk about, study, or analyze literature. I can see his ideas and approaches being scoffed at by academics, but that's what I like about this dude – as Jeremy from Peep Show would say, he's a bit of a maverick, he doesn't play by the rules, but by God he gets results.
The thing I really liked about Moretti's overall approach is the removal of a sense of spirituality, or pretence, from literary criticism. In some ways, literary criticism, or academia in general, has become a bit like a religion, or a cult. Literary critics tend towards jargon, or an overly prolix and impenetrable style/way of talking about literature. You have to speak in a certain way, to use certain words, and always act as if you know what you're talking about, even when you don't. Close Reading itself can often descend into a spiritual wankiness where people start to get more and more lyrical or poetic in their criticism, and cease to be truly analytical. I find, it often becomes less about what they are saying, but how they would like to appear to the people they are talking to.
And what I like about Moretti is that he doesn't fuck around. He's not afraid to feed all these texts into a computer and analyse trends like a little literary scientist donning his white lab coat and safety goggles. Why not plot some graphs? Why not make some pie charts? It makes it easier to see trends, it simplifies the message he is trying to get across – i.e. the results of his analysis. Because what's wrong with a bit of science/technology when we're approaching the Arts? Too often I find people veering toward pretension in literary studies, and I like this idea that if you're going to be a literary critic, you shouldn't beat about the bush – get stuck in, and do some proper analysis.
Rather than saying, 'there is a haunting sense of the phallocentric to this writer's prose' it's so much more conclusive to be able to say: this writer used the word 'penis' 500 times in their 200 page novel, and here's a little graph to show you.
The thing I really liked about Moretti's overall approach is the removal of a sense of spirituality, or pretence, from literary criticism. In some ways, literary criticism, or academia in general, has become a bit like a religion, or a cult. Literary critics tend towards jargon, or an overly prolix and impenetrable style/way of talking about literature. You have to speak in a certain way, to use certain words, and always act as if you know what you're talking about, even when you don't. Close Reading itself can often descend into a spiritual wankiness where people start to get more and more lyrical or poetic in their criticism, and cease to be truly analytical. I find, it often becomes less about what they are saying, but how they would like to appear to the people they are talking to.
And what I like about Moretti is that he doesn't fuck around. He's not afraid to feed all these texts into a computer and analyse trends like a little literary scientist donning his white lab coat and safety goggles. Why not plot some graphs? Why not make some pie charts? It makes it easier to see trends, it simplifies the message he is trying to get across – i.e. the results of his analysis. Because what's wrong with a bit of science/technology when we're approaching the Arts? Too often I find people veering toward pretension in literary studies, and I like this idea that if you're going to be a literary critic, you shouldn't beat about the bush – get stuck in, and do some proper analysis.
Rather than saying, 'there is a haunting sense of the phallocentric to this writer's prose' it's so much more conclusive to be able to say: this writer used the word 'penis' 500 times in their 200 page novel, and here's a little graph to show you.
September 15, 2020
In Search of a Wider Horizon
Okay, I'm finally through and I've got to say this has been one of the most intriguing readings in quite some time. First things first, this book is a collection of essays previously published in different journals written by a professor of world literature at Stanford, Franco Moretti. There is a central theme that runs through the book and makes the selections and the juxtaposition of them meaningful which is -- as suggested by the title -- "distant reading". However, I personally would argue that the theme of the book is the possibility of or the need for scaling up ; Making the data set so uncomprehendingly enormous that will drive him to come up with innovative and unconventional ways to study the set. And Moretti in doing so, comes up with some theories and methodologies of studying literary forms (their functions and evolution) in terms of "models" -- Reducing "texts" to systems. A method which helps already present elements become visible for the first time. All the methods of study chosen by Moretti require some computation in all the articles, but the significance of this collection, and in fact DH for literary scholarship, is not actually "doing things faster" but seeing things for the first time; being able to visualize Hamlet as a network or a form (e.g. "clues" in 19th century detective fiction) as a Tree shines light on functions, relations and meanings never before realised.
I will write a more comprehensive review, focusing on two or three key articles at a later time, but for now I think there are a few amazing and note-worthy outcomes to the unprecedented and unconventional literary scholarship of Franco Moretti.
1) Moretti has a very interesting, at first perhaps trivial outlook on the literary canon and canon formation. The fact of the matter is that only a few works, perhaps 0.5 per cent of all the works written in a particular period make their way the canon. That seems obvious and to some extent the point of canons but why doesn't that 99.5 per cent get into the canon? That is the fascinating question of "The Slaughterhouse of Literature". The "why" can help us realise why the canon looks the way it does right now. He does that by studying the form of clues in 19th century detective fiction from the very first stories that almost invariably do not have any "clues" in the right sense of the term to the works of Conan Doyle which is his main focus; How and why all that is left from 19th century British detective fiction is Conan Doyle?
2) World literature is a tricky business because no one really knows what it is, why it is and how we're supposed to study and analyse it. Moretti has an answer. It's this: No one will ever read any considerable number of literary works of the world . No one can . So let us come up with a new theory; A theory to explain this "great unread". And that's precisely what he sets out to do; using a theory of economics (world-systems) and explaining the emergence of the Novel in the "world".
3) Finally, there is "Style Inc.". Perhaps the most famous of all the articles and arguably the most interesting one. Here you see Moretti at his best; He takes a corpus of roughly 7000 titles of British novels written in the 19th century and examine their length, structure and meaning. Here you see his "sociology of form" (another one of his books) at its finest; explaining the evolution of titles according to and on the background of the gradually but drastically growing market of novels. What can the length of all the titles from 1800s to 1820s tell us? How can the study of hundreds of titles help us analyse genres? He's got the answer: He goes through all the 7000 titles, graph by graph, decade by decade, showing how the shortening of titles is directly affected by the growing of the market and how certain trends like the "the x of y" and the prevalence of the indefinite article (to name a few) could elaborate on matters of style and genre at a large scale using a concrete and objective method.
Moretti is a scholar with original ideas and methods; he is worthy of the attention because his works are some of the most significant literary analyses of a large scale and quantitative nature ever conducted. He is witty and writes academic articles with a style and flow that is quite enjoyable to read. A great read, a must-read for anyone interested in literary analysis, the evolution of literary forms and more importantly all the wondrous ways of expanding the horizon of literary scholarship.
Okay, I'm finally through and I've got to say this has been one of the most intriguing readings in quite some time. First things first, this book is a collection of essays previously published in different journals written by a professor of world literature at Stanford, Franco Moretti. There is a central theme that runs through the book and makes the selections and the juxtaposition of them meaningful which is -- as suggested by the title -- "distant reading". However, I personally would argue that the theme of the book is the possibility of or the need for scaling up ; Making the data set so uncomprehendingly enormous that will drive him to come up with innovative and unconventional ways to study the set. And Moretti in doing so, comes up with some theories and methodologies of studying literary forms (their functions and evolution) in terms of "models" -- Reducing "texts" to systems. A method which helps already present elements become visible for the first time. All the methods of study chosen by Moretti require some computation in all the articles, but the significance of this collection, and in fact DH for literary scholarship, is not actually "doing things faster" but seeing things for the first time; being able to visualize Hamlet as a network or a form (e.g. "clues" in 19th century detective fiction) as a Tree shines light on functions, relations and meanings never before realised.
I will write a more comprehensive review, focusing on two or three key articles at a later time, but for now I think there are a few amazing and note-worthy outcomes to the unprecedented and unconventional literary scholarship of Franco Moretti.
1) Moretti has a very interesting, at first perhaps trivial outlook on the literary canon and canon formation. The fact of the matter is that only a few works, perhaps 0.5 per cent of all the works written in a particular period make their way the canon. That seems obvious and to some extent the point of canons but why doesn't that 99.5 per cent get into the canon? That is the fascinating question of "The Slaughterhouse of Literature". The "why" can help us realise why the canon looks the way it does right now. He does that by studying the form of clues in 19th century detective fiction from the very first stories that almost invariably do not have any "clues" in the right sense of the term to the works of Conan Doyle which is his main focus; How and why all that is left from 19th century British detective fiction is Conan Doyle?
2) World literature is a tricky business because no one really knows what it is, why it is and how we're supposed to study and analyse it. Moretti has an answer. It's this: No one will ever read any considerable number of literary works of the world . No one can . So let us come up with a new theory; A theory to explain this "great unread". And that's precisely what he sets out to do; using a theory of economics (world-systems) and explaining the emergence of the Novel in the "world".
3) Finally, there is "Style Inc.". Perhaps the most famous of all the articles and arguably the most interesting one. Here you see Moretti at his best; He takes a corpus of roughly 7000 titles of British novels written in the 19th century and examine their length, structure and meaning. Here you see his "sociology of form" (another one of his books) at its finest; explaining the evolution of titles according to and on the background of the gradually but drastically growing market of novels. What can the length of all the titles from 1800s to 1820s tell us? How can the study of hundreds of titles help us analyse genres? He's got the answer: He goes through all the 7000 titles, graph by graph, decade by decade, showing how the shortening of titles is directly affected by the growing of the market and how certain trends like the "the x of y" and the prevalence of the indefinite article (to name a few) could elaborate on matters of style and genre at a large scale using a concrete and objective method.
Moretti is a scholar with original ideas and methods; he is worthy of the attention because his works are some of the most significant literary analyses of a large scale and quantitative nature ever conducted. He is witty and writes academic articles with a style and flow that is quite enjoyable to read. A great read, a must-read for anyone interested in literary analysis, the evolution of literary forms and more importantly all the wondrous ways of expanding the horizon of literary scholarship.
March 17, 2018
Simply astonishing. What this book really feels like is a fascinating journey through different fields of knowledge. Moretti is playful and quite brilliant; my guess is that he resembles alot his brother - both are bright and, while being at it (and being serious), don't feel exhausting - but gripping. Truth be told, I loved the book, and read it as slowly and concentrated as I possibly could. Many ideas arose; Moretti isn't always right. Needless to say, though, his methods and interests, spanning over 20 years of achievements and intellectual passion, are of great importance.
March 22, 2017
Still not convinced.
October 29, 2018
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December 28, 2025Ha valaki "A" világirodalmat vagy akár az európai irodalmat, vagy "csak" az európai regényt akarja kutatni, hamar a szoros olvasás és ezzel összefüggésben a kánon problémájába ütközik: alig néhány szöveg szoros olvasására van az embernek lehetősége, de mit tudhatunk a kánonba nem bekerült művekről, a "the great unread"-ről? - teszi fel a kérdést Moretti. Ő két évszázad angol irodalmát kutatva is sarlatánnak érzi magát, írja, hát akkor hogyan kutathatja bárki a világirodalmat, és tehet bármilyen megállapítást arra vonatkozóan? Amikor sok-sok nyelv sokezer könyvét valahogyan együtt, egyszerre kellene látnunk, hogy trendeket és mozgásokat vegyünk észre, vagy a formák különböző működésmódját, ahogyan Moretti írja, akkor egyszerűen már nem tud megoldás lenni az, hogy még többet és még többet olvasunk. Egyik esszéjében Morettit az foglalkoztatja, hogy a nem kanonizált, csupán saját korukban népszerű könyvek sokaságát formailag mi különbözteti meg a sikeres és a kánonba bekerült könyvektől? Erre egy (kezdetleges) távoli olvasás kutatást talál ki, mely során 20 krimitörténetet olvas el és hasonlít össze a jelek (clues) használata alapján. A distant reading ebben az esetben azt jelenti, hogy kiválasztunk egy jelenséget (formát), amit keresünk (itt épp a jelek azok a krimiben), és csak erre fókuszálva olvasunk el nem egy, hanem több, de azért nem túl sok szöveget. És ennek az egy szövegbeli jelenségnek a jelentőségéről próbálunk valamit megállapítani az adott műfajban, szövegtípusban. Egy következő esszéjében már sokkal inkább a digitális bölcsészet eszközei kerülnek elő: itt 7000 regénycímet vizsgál és hasonlít össze különböző szempontok alapján, amelyek eredményét diagramokon teszi láthatóvá, majd magyaráz (például a regénycímek hosszának időbeni változása és ezek kulturális jelentősége, vagy a határozott és határozatlan névelők jelentősége a címekben).
Moretti a nagy, átfogó és tudományosan alátámasztott megállapításokat hiányolja az irodalomtudományokból. Milyen az európai regény? Milyen szabályszerűségei vannak a nyugati irodalomnak és a „periféria” irodalmának? Sejtése, hipotézise szerint (lásd. Conjectures on World Literature) a modern regény a perifériákon a nyugati (főleg angol–francia) forma és a helyi társadalmi–kulturális valóság kompromisszumából születik (53). Ezeknek a nagy kérdéseknek a megválaszolásához érezte kevésnek a szoros olvasást, mely módszer természetéből adódóan csak nagyon kevés szöveghez való közelmenést tesz lehetővé.
Moretti fő állítása: az irodalomtudomány túl sok energiát tett már az interpretációba, és túl keveset a kauzális, nagy léptékű magyarázatokba. Nem „kevesebb értelmezést”, hanem több oksági magyarázatot akar. „Meanings and forces”: őt nem az érdekli elsődlegesen, mit jelentenek a szövegek, hanem hogy milyen társadalmi, intézményi, formai erők alakítják őket. Ebben látja az igazi elméleti áttörés lehetőségét. (152) Erről már csak említésszerűen ír, de például Natalie Phillipsszel közösen MRI-ben olvastattak embereket intenzíven és extenzíven, és azt figyelték, hogy az agy, az idegrendszer milyen módon működik másképp a két típusú olvasás közben.
Számomra ez egy jó bevezető könyv volt a digitális bölcsészet világába, amelyet - a terveim szerint - újabb, már az AI-eszközöket is számításba vevő tanulmányok olvasása követ majd.
Moretti nagy dolgokat akart mondani AZ európai irodalomról. Milyen az európai regény? Milyen szabályszerűségei vannak a nyugati irodalomnak és a „periféria” irodalmának? Sejtése, hipotézise szerint (lásd. Conjectures on World Literature, a Distant Reading c. könyvének második esszéje) a modern regény a perifériákon a nyugati (főleg angol–francia) forma és a helyi társadalmi–kulturális valóság kompromisszumából születik (53). Ezeknek a nagy kérdéseknek a megválaszolásához érezte kevésnek a szoros olvasást, mely módszer természetéből adódóan csak nagyon kevés szöveghez való közelmenést tesz lehetővé.
Moretti a nagy, átfogó és tudományosan alátámasztott megállapításokat hiányolja az irodalomtudományokból. Milyen az európai regény? Milyen szabályszerűségei vannak a nyugati irodalomnak és a „periféria” irodalmának? Sejtése, hipotézise szerint (lásd. Conjectures on World Literature) a modern regény a perifériákon a nyugati (főleg angol–francia) forma és a helyi társadalmi–kulturális valóság kompromisszumából születik (53). Ezeknek a nagy kérdéseknek a megválaszolásához érezte kevésnek a szoros olvasást, mely módszer természetéből adódóan csak nagyon kevés szöveghez való közelmenést tesz lehetővé.
Moretti fő állítása: az irodalomtudomány túl sok energiát tett már az interpretációba, és túl keveset a kauzális, nagy léptékű magyarázatokba. Nem „kevesebb értelmezést”, hanem több oksági magyarázatot akar. „Meanings and forces”: őt nem az érdekli elsődlegesen, mit jelentenek a szövegek, hanem hogy milyen társadalmi, intézményi, formai erők alakítják őket. Ebben látja az igazi elméleti áttörés lehetőségét. (152) Erről már csak említésszerűen ír, de például Natalie Phillipsszel közösen MRI-ben olvastattak embereket intenzíven és extenzíven, és azt figyelték, hogy az agy, az idegrendszer milyen módon működik másképp a két típusú olvasás közben.
Számomra ez egy jó bevezető könyv volt a digitális bölcsészet világába, amelyet - a terveim szerint - újabb, már az AI-eszközöket is számításba vevő tanulmányok olvasása követ majd.
Moretti nagy dolgokat akart mondani AZ európai irodalomról. Milyen az európai regény? Milyen szabályszerűségei vannak a nyugati irodalomnak és a „periféria” irodalmának? Sejtése, hipotézise szerint (lásd. Conjectures on World Literature, a Distant Reading c. könyvének második esszéje) a modern regény a perifériákon a nyugati (főleg angol–francia) forma és a helyi társadalmi–kulturális valóság kompromisszumából születik (53). Ezeknek a nagy kérdéseknek a megválaszolásához érezte kevésnek a szoros olvasást, mely módszer természetéből adódóan csak nagyon kevés szöveghez való közelmenést tesz lehetővé.
July 2, 2021
Valuable Examples of Data, Chart and Graph Use to Analyze Literature - Other reviewers have given good accounts of the general contents and structure of Moretti’s “Distant Reading,” so here I will comment on its value in terms of using data, charts and graphs in literature analysis.
As Moretti states early on “world literature” is too vast to be analyzed in the more conventional way of a detailed reading of a small cannon of classic books. Careful reading and interpretation is still important, but other means can be used to “narrow” the field to hone in on aspects and works to examine in a more comprehensive manner. There are also different ways to go about studying literary arts and stories in this emerging era of “big data.”
Among my favorite parts of “Distant Reading” that illustrate Moretti’s approach include chapters entitled “The Slaughterhouse of Literature,” “Planet Hollywood,” “Evolution, World-Systems, Weltliteratur,” “Style, Inc. Reflections on 7,000 Titles (British Literature 1740-1850)” and “Network Theory, Plot Analysis” where his employment of charts, graphs, and other visual analytical tools are particularly vivid.
More specifically, “The Slaughterhouse of Literature” is a metaphor that Moretti uses were “the prime cuts” (my words) are determined by the “butchers”/readers as they keep certain literary works current and at the forefront through their buying/reading habits. Moretti illustrates this process by examining how Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” detective fiction emerged as prominent in the genre through its use of “clues.” Tree diagrams on pages 73 and 79 are key to his analyses. In “Planet Hollywood,” Moretti employs world maps and box office results (e.g. see page 103) from the trade paper “Variety” to show how audience reception and popularity of action/ adventure, comedy, drama, and children’s film genres compare and contrast in different regions. Within “Evolution, World-Systems, Weltliteratur,” he utilizes linguistic trees (e.g. on page 126) to show ways language families have come together in fiction overtime in literature around the globe. “Style, Inc. Reflections on 7,000 Titles (British Literature 1740-1850)” incorporates scatter plots with the length of book names and then numbers published over time (e.g. see page 183) to demonstrate the manner in which reading preferences and markets changed. “Network Theory, Plot Analysis” applies diagrams of social relations among the characters in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (e.g. see page 213) and Chinese novels to try alternative means of “looking” into and visualizing story lines.
While like the author himself, one can find flaws at times in his methods and conclusions, Moretti does provide valuable examples of data, chart and graph use to analyze literature that are well worth consideration and emulation.
As Moretti states early on “world literature” is too vast to be analyzed in the more conventional way of a detailed reading of a small cannon of classic books. Careful reading and interpretation is still important, but other means can be used to “narrow” the field to hone in on aspects and works to examine in a more comprehensive manner. There are also different ways to go about studying literary arts and stories in this emerging era of “big data.”
Among my favorite parts of “Distant Reading” that illustrate Moretti’s approach include chapters entitled “The Slaughterhouse of Literature,” “Planet Hollywood,” “Evolution, World-Systems, Weltliteratur,” “Style, Inc. Reflections on 7,000 Titles (British Literature 1740-1850)” and “Network Theory, Plot Analysis” where his employment of charts, graphs, and other visual analytical tools are particularly vivid.
More specifically, “The Slaughterhouse of Literature” is a metaphor that Moretti uses were “the prime cuts” (my words) are determined by the “butchers”/readers as they keep certain literary works current and at the forefront through their buying/reading habits. Moretti illustrates this process by examining how Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” detective fiction emerged as prominent in the genre through its use of “clues.” Tree diagrams on pages 73 and 79 are key to his analyses. In “Planet Hollywood,” Moretti employs world maps and box office results (e.g. see page 103) from the trade paper “Variety” to show how audience reception and popularity of action/ adventure, comedy, drama, and children’s film genres compare and contrast in different regions. Within “Evolution, World-Systems, Weltliteratur,” he utilizes linguistic trees (e.g. on page 126) to show ways language families have come together in fiction overtime in literature around the globe. “Style, Inc. Reflections on 7,000 Titles (British Literature 1740-1850)” incorporates scatter plots with the length of book names and then numbers published over time (e.g. see page 183) to demonstrate the manner in which reading preferences and markets changed. “Network Theory, Plot Analysis” applies diagrams of social relations among the characters in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (e.g. see page 213) and Chinese novels to try alternative means of “looking” into and visualizing story lines.
While like the author himself, one can find flaws at times in his methods and conclusions, Moretti does provide valuable examples of data, chart and graph use to analyze literature that are well worth consideration and emulation.
February 13, 2025
Una serie de ensayos sobre análisis literario y la evolución de la literatura, principalmente en Europa. La verdad pensé que sería como sus últimos dos capitulos, que son espectaculares: Un análisis cuantitativo de los títulos novelas inglesas, sus palabras, tipologías y la influencia del mercado en estos, y un análisis cualitativo con redes de personajes de obras de Shakespeare y de la tradición China, visualizándolos con redes. Muy interesante la integración de teorías como la evolución de Darwin, o teoría de sistemas al mundo de la literatura, y me gustaría verlo extrapolado a otras artes. Pero fuera de esos tres o cuatro ensayos específicos, no me interesó mucho más, pero aplausos al autor por hacer accesible un tema complejo y erudito.
May 18, 2019
This book was different from what I expected, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have been reading about Literary Cartography and Moretti is often mentionned in that context, but in fact his writing is more a kind of spatial history of literature than a geography or cartography - in fact, I think of him as a Braudel of literature, Braudel being one of his sources of inspiration perhaps. I find many of Moretti's insights into the development of literary markets to be fascinating and brilliant and reading this book changed my understanding of what writing is about in significant ways. Highly recommended, not only to scholars but also to writers!
May 28, 2020
This was a very good and inspiring read! I enjoyed the fluidity and clarity of style and argument, Moretti's meta-comments to his previously published articles and - of course - the change of perspective in writing literary history. Concerning the latter, distant reading really seems to be a useful tool for literary history, at least if you have the technical (e.g. digital corpus with OCR), financial and personal capacities and if it is in dialogue with close and contextual readings. I also find the use of graphs and diagrams very temptative (and his books on graphs etc. is on my shelf).
March 12, 2018
Mixed feelings about this one. Moretti is intent on striking out in bold new directions, but he has so far achieved only modest success. (The highlight of the book is his corpus linguistic-like analysis of the titles of 7,000 British novels, from 1740-1850.) My major shared interest with the author is an abiding concern with the intersection of plot and style, which he discusses as a feasible future project but on which he adds here precisely ... nothing. Hence, 3/5.
April 2, 2024
Studied his two "Conjectures" articles for a word literature course and his simple writing style, straightforward thinking and curious ideas got me interested. I'm not really entirely convinced by his arguments but interesting nonetheless. He strikes me as a pragmatic thinker, reasonable, productive. Idk.
May 23, 2018
Moretti plays the enfant terrible again, with differing results. Some articles are really convincing while others don't make much sense. in any case, he opens up new venues for literary criticism, which is always a good thing.
July 16, 2019
Un muy buen ejemplo de cómo se puede comprender patrones culturales e históricos amplios si cambiamos el foco de lo micro a los macro. Moretti propone el uso de mapas, árboles y líneas de tiempo para visualizar estas tendencias.
Una propuesta que ha revolucionado los estudios literarios.
Una propuesta que ha revolucionado los estudios literarios.
May 28, 2023
I admire his work as a literary historian, but when he talks in statistical terms he does sound a bit like a charlatan. The ideas are attractive, and I do believe that “close reading” is a thing of the past, but the graphs and statistical models need more development.
October 17, 2024
The thing I was most invested in--network theory--was the least convincing. Can these experiments work in exponentially complex atmospheres like the explosion of SFF film or the age of AI? Do they scale up or collapse into meaninglessness?
February 14, 2022
excelentes primeras 25 páginas el resto son totalmente irrelevantes
April 11, 2024
A collection of articles outlining the development of distant reading as a method in the study of literary history.
March 19, 2017
Spanning a broad range of his career, this is a good overview of the development of Moretti's ideas regarding distant reading and the quantitative study of literature. I studied with him somewhere around the middle, and it was enjoyable to see how that work fit in with the rest.
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July 1, 2016من الصعب - والخطير - تقييمه أو تكوين انطباع فوري - أو حتى تفكري - عنه. إنه شيء مستفز وشائك، ومتطرف نوعا ما، بل وربما واعد في بعض جوانبه على الأقل، ويجب تلقيه حاليا كهذا فقط حتى تتم عملية تشريح أكبر له ومحاولة تطبيق عملية. وأنا أتحدث هنا عن نفسي.
لنبدأ بمدرسة الأنال التاريخية التي احتذى بها موريتي في نظريته هذه.
كنت قد كتبت عنها بشكل سريع في مراجعتي لكتاب فرنان بروديل هنا https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
فكرة موريتي - مؤسس "معمل" ستانفورد الأدبي - حول أن النقد الادبي وصل طريقا مسدودا من العشوائية والمحدودية مقنع ومطروق، ولكن حله الجنوني جنوني فعلا.
فالرجل يدعم رأيا ليس جديدا، وهو أن النقد الأدبي صار انتقائيا يستثني من الانتاج البشري الغزير عدة نصوص ويقدمها على أنها انعكاس كلي. فلن نفهم الأدب كامتداد تاريخي متشابك مع التكوين الثقافي والعقلي والسيسيولوجي بل وحتى الطبوغرافي ونحن لازلنا نقرأ نفس الأعمال الرئيسية التي نتلقاها كتلخيص لتلك الحقب في زمانكيتها الأدبية. إنه مثل مدرسة الأنال يطالب بتوسيع الرقعة البانورامية لتشمل أشياء لا تظهر على الخارطة التقليدية، أشياء قد لا يُظن تقليديا أنها متورطة في تكوين المشهد إياه.
الحل "النظري" في رأيه هو "تلقي" الأدب كخرائط ورسوم بيانية، لتوسيع الرؤية بطريقة بانورامية تشمل معظم الانتاج البشري لكل عصر وتكسر الاحتكار المضلل. الحل "العملي" هو أنه يريد الاعتماد على حوسبة كومبيوترية لخلق أنماط استقراء تاريخية!
أنْ تحول كل التاريخ الأدبي وتحديدا ذلك الذي لم يُقرأ منه بطريقة ما إلى "داتا"، ومن ثم تحليل هذه الداتا بشكل حاسوبي لكشف أنماط تلقي وخطوط تلاقي تكاد تكون ميكروبية. ولكن لا يجوز القول أن نظريته ليست معنية بالنقد الأدبي فعلا كأعمال فردية بقدر ما هي معنية بتاريخ الأدب وكيف تنشأ النصوص وكيف تتطور وكيف تتكامل، فمن وجهة نظره لا يمكن الفصل بين هذين، لا يمكن قراءة العمل الأدبي من دون قراءة السياقات التي تدرجت منه ونشأت فيه. ولهذا هو يستشهد بمدرسة الأنال، لأن هذه المدرسة كان لها تصور مشابه عن التاريخ، السياسة تتداخل مع الجغرافيا وكلاهما تتداخلان مع الاقتصاد وجميعهم يشتبكون بالسيسيولوجيا إلخ. لا يمكن قراءة "الحدث" إلى في سياقه البانورامي الميكروبي.
مفهوم دخول الآلة لقراءة أنماط بشرية - أيا كانت - هي ليست فكرة غريبة، فهي موجودة في مجالات عديدة. الإحصاء يقوم عليها بشكل كبير، بعض مدارس السيسيولوجيا، بل حتى بعض الرياضات.
ولكن في الأدب/التاريخ، هل هذا الشيء ممكن أصلا عمليا؟ وكيف؟ وهل هو نتيجة مفهومة لهذا الحل "النظري"؟
هذا شيء يحتاج إلى تعمق أكبر. ولذا؛ لا تقييم للعمل ولا انطباع واضح عنه. يُترك إلى حين.
لنبدأ بمدرسة الأنال التاريخية التي احتذى بها موريتي في نظريته هذه.
كنت قد كتبت عنها بشكل سريع في مراجعتي لكتاب فرنان بروديل هنا https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
فكرة موريتي - مؤسس "معمل" ستانفورد الأدبي - حول أن النقد الادبي وصل طريقا مسدودا من العشوائية والمحدودية مقنع ومطروق، ولكن حله الجنوني جنوني فعلا.
فالرجل يدعم رأيا ليس جديدا، وهو أن النقد الأدبي صار انتقائيا يستثني من الانتاج البشري الغزير عدة نصوص ويقدمها على أنها انعكاس كلي. فلن نفهم الأدب كامتداد تاريخي متشابك مع التكوين الثقافي والعقلي والسيسيولوجي بل وحتى الطبوغرافي ونحن لازلنا نقرأ نفس الأعمال الرئيسية التي نتلقاها كتلخيص لتلك الحقب في زمانكيتها الأدبية. إنه مثل مدرسة الأنال يطالب بتوسيع الرقعة البانورامية لتشمل أشياء لا تظهر على الخارطة التقليدية، أشياء قد لا يُظن تقليديا أنها متورطة في تكوين المشهد إياه.
الحل "النظري" في رأيه هو "تلقي" الأدب كخرائط ورسوم بيانية، لتوسيع الرؤية بطريقة بانورامية تشمل معظم الانتاج البشري لكل عصر وتكسر الاحتكار المضلل. الحل "العملي" هو أنه يريد الاعتماد على حوسبة كومبيوترية لخلق أنماط استقراء تاريخية!
أنْ تحول كل التاريخ الأدبي وتحديدا ذلك الذي لم يُقرأ منه بطريقة ما إلى "داتا"، ومن ثم تحليل هذه الداتا بشكل حاسوبي لكشف أنماط تلقي وخطوط تلاقي تكاد تكون ميكروبية. ولكن لا يجوز القول أن نظريته ليست معنية بالنقد الأدبي فعلا كأعمال فردية بقدر ما هي معنية بتاريخ الأدب وكيف تنشأ النصوص وكيف تتطور وكيف تتكامل، فمن وجهة نظره لا يمكن الفصل بين هذين، لا يمكن قراءة العمل الأدبي من دون قراءة السياقات التي تدرجت منه ونشأت فيه. ولهذا هو يستشهد بمدرسة الأنال، لأن هذه المدرسة كان لها تصور مشابه عن التاريخ، السياسة تتداخل مع الجغرافيا وكلاهما تتداخلان مع الاقتصاد وجميعهم يشتبكون بالسيسيولوجيا إلخ. لا يمكن قراءة "الحدث" إلى في سياقه البانورامي الميكروبي.
مفهوم دخول الآلة لقراءة أنماط بشرية - أيا كانت - هي ليست فكرة غريبة، فهي موجودة في مجالات عديدة. الإحصاء يقوم عليها بشكل كبير، بعض مدارس السيسيولوجيا، بل حتى بعض الرياضات.
ولكن في الأدب/التاريخ، هل هذا الشيء ممكن أصلا عمليا؟ وكيف؟ وهل هو نتيجة مفهومة لهذا الحل "النظري"؟
هذا شيء يحتاج إلى تعمق أكبر. ولذا؛ لا تقييم للعمل ولا انطباع واضح عنه. يُترك إلى حين.
September 4, 2017
Книга полезна, провокативна и заставляет задуматься о тех больших проблемах, которые встали перед наукой о литературе в 20 веке. Это шаг вперёд на фоне увлечения у нас структурализмом или широко понимаемым формализмом, с одной стороны, или вульгарным социологизмом — с другой.
Однако в то же самое время с методологической точки зрения книга тонкостью решительно не отличается и, напротив, удивительно наивна. Автор, похоже, уверен, что можно "взять" теорию эволюции и/или построения Валлерстайна и "перенести" на литературный материал. Вот так просто. Причём делается это без теоретической рефлексии: он ссылается на Дарвина и Валлерстайна, игнорируя научную традицию.
Остался непроясненным вопрос: почему именно Дарвин и Валлерстайн? Что это за всеми признанные гиганты мысли?
Кроме того, часто кажется, что автор изобретает велосипед. Кто-то не понимал, что "мировая литература" не включает Китай или Филиппины? Кто-то не понимал, что это евроцентричная концепция? Кто-то не понимал, что культурный трансфер (это понятие он либо не знает, либо игнорирует) подразумевает сложное взаимодействие "адресанта" и "адресата"? Наконец, кто-то не понимал, что т.н. канон — это всего лишь мизерный процент от всей литературной продукции. Пафос первооткрывателя сомнителен.
Итак, повторю, книга полезная, написана легко, но специалисту не нужна, а неофита, скорее, смутит.
Однако в то же самое время с методологической точки зрения книга тонкостью решительно не отличается и, напротив, удивительно наивна. Автор, похоже, уверен, что можно "взять" теорию эволюции и/или построения Валлерстайна и "перенести" на литературный материал. Вот так просто. Причём делается это без теоретической рефлексии: он ссылается на Дарвина и Валлерстайна, игнорируя научную традицию.
Остался непроясненным вопрос: почему именно Дарвин и Валлерстайн? Что это за всеми признанные гиганты мысли?
Кроме того, часто кажется, что автор изобретает велосипед. Кто-то не понимал, что "мировая литература" не включает Китай или Филиппины? Кто-то не понимал, что это евроцентричная концепция? Кто-то не понимал, что культурный трансфер (это понятие он либо не знает, либо игнорирует) подразумевает сложное взаимодействие "адресанта" и "адресата"? Наконец, кто-то не понимал, что т.н. канон — это всего лишь мизерный процент от всей литературной продукции. Пафос первооткрывателя сомнителен.
Итак, повторю, книга полезная, написана легко, но специалисту не нужна, а неофита, скорее, смутит.
November 30, 2013
In the rather frenetic world of literary criticism, theoretical speculation enjoys the same symbolic status as cocaine: one has to try it.
--Franco Moretti, Signs Taken for Wonders
I don't always agree with Franco Moretti, but I usually enjoy reading his books, and this one was no exception. Not only because of his writing style, which is lively and straightforward, but also because it is generally interesting and often exhilarating to watch someone puzzle over completely new approaches to literary studies. Hence the 4 stars: not because I agree with his ideas (because I don't, with many of them), but because I really enjoyed reading the book, and it made me think.
Way more detail on the blog, if you're interested.
--Franco Moretti, Signs Taken for Wonders
I don't always agree with Franco Moretti, but I usually enjoy reading his books, and this one was no exception. Not only because of his writing style, which is lively and straightforward, but also because it is generally interesting and often exhilarating to watch someone puzzle over completely new approaches to literary studies. Hence the 4 stars: not because I agree with his ideas (because I don't, with many of them), but because I really enjoyed reading the book, and it made me think.
Way more detail on the blog, if you're interested.
June 23, 2013
The essays in this collection have all been previously published, but the effect of seeing them all together, with reflective comments by Moretti, helps to present his work of the last decade or so as a trajectory. I have quibbles with some of his generalizations about genres, world literature, and so forth, but his ability to ask interesting questions (and in the process, to change the shape of literary studies) is admirable. Overall an excellent "big picture" collection of essays that should stimulate many small picture responses.
July 21, 2013
Hard to score, as the first 10 essays or so are nicely written, well meaning but ultimately pedestrian. Yeah, I can see that he was always tilting against close reading, but it is pretty much a footnote to Wallerstein with a sprinkling of a fairly naive evolutionary theory thrown in.
The last two chapters on formal analysis using network theory and title analysis are much more interesting. Ultimately, the analysis is fairly trivial. But the implications of gaining insight from mass of text actually produced (and not merely in the canon) is fascinating.
The last two chapters on formal analysis using network theory and title analysis are much more interesting. Ultimately, the analysis is fairly trivial. But the implications of gaining insight from mass of text actually produced (and not merely in the canon) is fascinating.
February 7, 2017
Has lots of details about the history of literature that I had NO chance of following (which makes sense, given that most of the essays were printed in comparative literature journals), but besides that it's a super fascinating book that basically lays out tons of "seeds" for research initiatives in the digital humanities, seeds that hopefully grow into full research programs
July 30, 2013
Moretti's clumsy use of quantitative tools (of which he's well aware) is disarming, theories are his forte.
Opened the way for the great stream of pamphlets the Stanford Literary Lab has been publishing over the years: http://litlab.stanford.edu/?page_id=255
Opened the way for the great stream of pamphlets the Stanford Literary Lab has been publishing over the years: http://litlab.stanford.edu/?page_id=255
August 26, 2014
Probably one of the best literary criticism books in recent years. It's not just it's accessible language, but Moretti demonstrates effectively what readers and writers could both use with maths and sciences.
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