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HOW_SOFT_A_WHISPER

                                                       January 17, 2007
One of the funnier things I've run into
in some time is the new concept being         I came across this only
pushed by the literary theorist Franco        recently, in a book
Moretti.  Instead of "Close Reading",         review in _The Nation_ by
he champions "Distant Reading".               one of his colleagues,
                                              William Deresiewicz.
   This is Moretti's attempt at putting
   literary criticism-- or at least,            [ref]
   literary history-- on something like
   an empirical, scientific basis...

   What's funny is that                   And perhaps another member of
   everyone seems to                      that grand club of mildly
   find Moretti's ideas                   deranged characters (such as
   kind of funny -- no                    myself) who insist on looking
   one is persuaded that                  for the great, lost, land bridge
   he's really correct,                   between the two cultures.
   but everyone takes it
   easy on him.                              BIBLES

      Web searches on the subject
      turned up a surprising             I'm a fan of Cosma Shalizi, a man
      Cosma Shalizi connection...        with a scientific background who
                                         neverthless engages in much "popular"
           Shalizi's review of           writing in the humanities fields.
           Moretti's "Atlas"
           treats it with a                                      SHALIZI
           certain affectionate,            Though you have to
           amused contempt.                 wonder about that
                                            project he's been
           (Literary professors are         working on for
           so *cute* when they try          years, putting his
           to do statistics!)               notes on every
                                            subject imaginable
           Moretti responded                out on the web.
           by inviting Shalizi
           to one of his                       Strange fellow.
           conferences...
                                               [ref]
           A sing the beast to
           sleep manuever?

           Moretti does seem
           to have a talent
           for making friends.

             But on the other hand, it is
             not at all a bad idea for
             Moretti to get someone with
             a mathematical bent to teach
             him something about
             statistical significance.

             [ref]
             [ref]


    If the quotations of Moretti
    I've seen are any guide, the
    man is over-reaching tremendously
    with his campaigning for "distant
    reading", but there's no reason
    that researchers should not take           By stepping back, you can
    that approach -- it's a little             cover more ground.
    peculiar if they don't already.
                                                     FIRST13
      Though obviously, also, there
      are limits to what you can get
      out of such things.                  Let's graph the
                                           frequency of publication
                                           of post-nuclear apocalypse
                                           stories!

                                              Hypothesis: they'll ramp
Consider the usual approach:                  up quickly after 1945,
close reading of the                          and peak around ten years
canonized heroes.                             later, gradually trailing
                                              off for the next two
Who's the best?  The big S.                   decades, when suddenly
So, you sit down and read                     they stop.
"Hamlet".
                                                    And what would
But who were Shakespere's                           this study tell
competitors?                                        us exactly?

How many Elizabethean playwrites                    If it turned out that
were there, how many plays?                         the hypothesis was
                                                    off slightly, what
And... isn't "Hamlet" a genre                       would *that* say?
work, a revenge play?  How many
revenge plays were there?                              "Oh my god, there's
                                                       almost a complete
When did the form start?                               drop in post-apocalypse
                                                       stories in the
What were the genre tropes?                            early 70s!  And then
                                                       after the movie
                                                       "Omega Man" they
   It would be very surprising if                      started up again."
   these kinds of questions weren't
   answerable by Shakesperean scholars...                 Yes, that would
   but it's also clear that it's not                      be fascinating...
   the way Shakespere is taught at
   the introductory level.

     And if you begin expanding your
     range of interest away from the
     well-studied Elizabethean
     terrain, do you find that other
     similar questions have known
     answers?

                             It would seem
                             to make sense to
                             engage in both
                             distant reading       TWO_LEVEL
                             and close reading.

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