Digital Humanities Franco Moretti

“Abstract Models for literary History…” (8). In correspondence with the Digital Humanities effort, Franco Moretti in his book, in the title chaptered “Graphs”, describes how the humanities departments should be supplanting detailed “close reading” with an abstract “distant reading”. As opposed to focusing on the minute and subjective, abstraction aims to recognize certain literary patterns throughout history, genres, places, etc.

Interpretation V Data “Quantitative research provides a type of data which is ideally independent of interpretations” (9). The goal is to shift away from the close analyzing of specific words and instead focus on the larger patterns that can be found. This is done with the aid of digital tools, by comparing and contrasting certain elements of a text. For example: most frequent words can be compared and contrast, the differences found in texts spanning times can be surmised, indications of genres can be taken from details unaccounted for by the naked human eye, such as the pattern of punctuations. This allows the reader to gather objective data, rather than relying on the subjective interpretation of some English professor somewhere.

Genres Determined by Time Period “Morphological Genres that last in time, but always only for some time”(14). Genres or themes are largely dependent on the time period they occur in. Certain themes or genres become more and less popular as time goes on.

Certain Themes Prevail… “As long as a hegemonic form has not lost its ‘artistic usefulness’, there is not much that a rival form can do” (17). A form of writing can remain in place for quite some time, as long as there remains a relevance for that topic.

Moretti’s Concepts Applied to Text THE GENRE/THEME OF EVIL AS COMPARED THROUGH EVOLVING TIME PERIODS. HOW HAS IT PROGRESSED AND CHANGED? IS IT THE SAME THEME THAT IS STILL RELAVANT, OR AN EVOLVED THEME THAT IS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT?

Corpus of Grimm Tales and Disney Tales Rather than reading each individual text which would take too much time, we collect a corpus of Grimm Brothers’ tales and Disney screenplays. We abstract the texts, by feeding them into the computer and noting their similarities and differences. Grimm Brothers The Frog King, or Iron Henry Our Lady's Child The Story of a Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids Faithful John The Good Bargain The Twelve Brothers Brother and Sister Rapunzel The Three Little Men in the Wood The Three Spinners Hansel and Grethel Disney Fairytales Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Pinocchio Fantasia The Reluctant Dragon Dumbo Bambi Cinderella Sleeping Beauty Princess and the Frog Make Mine Music Song of the South Fun and Fancy Free

Collection of Data We hope to compare and contrast the Brothers Grimm's Stories and the Disney Fairytales that were based on them. After collect our data, we will create “maps” and “graphs” that illustrate the progression, evolution, and changes of these stories over time. We will focus on a key theme…

In our project, the genre/theme of evil is the one we are choosing to focus on. We hope to determine: Is it an ever-relevant theme that is just still continued from the Grimm time period? Has it totally changed, and now represents something entirely different that is characterized by our time period? If it has changed, how? And what does this reflect?

Evil Theme’s “Artistic Usefulness” Because we have recreated the Grimm Brother’s Fairytales, they seem to still be artistically useful and relevant. Yet, the Disney version is quite and seems to portray evil in a much different way. How? Why?

Digital Considerations to Answer these Questions Voyant- Can be used to collocate words associated with the evil characters in the Disney movies V. Grimm. MFW- can objectively gather the prevalence of evil throughout the stories. Textarc- can show the frequency of evil throughout the stories. LDA can collect the patterns of associated words with key topics. Correspondence analysis- can analyze the differences Etc…

Conclusion Moretti's concepts of abstracting literature will be applied by collecting a corpus of Grimm Brother's fairytale's and comparing them to more current and prettied up versions of Disney’s fairy tales. The idea of genre and theme will be analyzed by comparing and contrasting the differences between the two corpuses. A determination will be made regarding the relevance of evil as a theme, after we have collected enough data to recognize the progression or lack of, between the two.