1. Franco Moretti’s Distant Reading: How to Analyze Literature in a Whole New Way Adina Adler 1

2. Distant Reading “‘Distant reading’, I have once called this type of approach; where distance is however not an obstacle, but a specific form of knowledge.” -Franco Moretti Distant reading is a new form of literary analysis. A way to “read a million books” one might say. 2

3. The Great Unread One can never truly be an expert in an area of literature because he cannot ever read through every text that exists within a genre, or even have time to classify every text by genre. This is the concept of “The Great Unread” (Allison et al). There are so few texts that reach the mainstream for “close reading” whereas there’s so much more that can contribute to literary study. 3

4. The Stanford Literary Lab Founded by Franco Moretti in 2010 Dedicated to analyzing literature with software: i.e. distant reading. Takes literature from being an art to a science 4

5. Humanscope V. Docuscope Humanscope A human being’s close reading of a text to make claims about it. Example: to determine genre Art Docuscope A “smart dictionary” consisting of millions of “Language Action Types” to analyze text and make claims about it. Example: to determine genre Science 5

6. Practical Application: When This Won’t Work Sara Willis wrote satires under the pseudonym Fanny Fern. On the surface, her works seem like regular stories, regular distant reading using tools like Voyant won’t pick up on sarcasm As far as my research has gone, there is no indication that the docuscope can register satire, as sarcasm is something a humanscope will often miss. 6

7. Practical Application: When This Won’t Work To make a scientific claim on the work, it must be in terms that can be analyzed systematically, without the need for reading comprehension. To understand and categorize satire, the humanscope is necessary 7

8. Practical Application: When This Will Work If one wanted to make a particular claim about the work in terms of word usage, distant reading would be a useful avenue. One would need a research question. For example: What is the relationship between the word “woman” and it’s possessive form, “woman’s” in Fanny Fern’s Fresh Leaves? 8

9. Practical Application: When This Will Work Without ever having to read Fanny Fern’s Fresh Leaves, one could put the plain text into Voyant and compare the two words and thereby make a claim about the relationship between “woman” and “woman’s” in the work 9

10. Relationship Between “Woman” and “Woman’s” in Fanny Fern’s Fresh Leaves 10

11. Practical Application: When This Will Work Voyant’s chart showed that “woman” was used more often than “woman’s” There was no direct relationship between the usage of the words in each chapter of the book One could infer though, that in this work, women did not have much belonging to them and make claims and further research based on said claims. 11

12. Further Research In order to make claims about works, more analysis must be done than on only two words, but the idea is that one could make claims about a work without having read it based on the language detected by distant reading. 12

13. Science V. Art The practice of writing satire is an art, that’s what the writer wants you to walk away with from his or her specific work. The practice of analyzing the language to make claims about a genre is science. Distant reading is a tool to enhance literary analysis in terms of digital humanities, not to replace literary analysis as an art form. Adina Adler13

14. Works Cited Allison, Sarah. “Quantitative Formalism: An Experiment” Literary Lab. (2011). Print. Moretti, Franco. “Graphs, Maps, Trees Abstract Models for Literary History.” 2007. Print. Rothman, Joshua. "An Attempt to Discover the Laws of Literature - The New Yorker." The New Yorker. 20 Mar. 2014. Web. 25 Nov. 2014. Schulz, Kathryn. "What Is Distant Reading?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 June 2011. Web. 25 Nov. 2014. Fern, Fanny. Fresh Leaves. by Fanny Fern [Pseud.]. Gardners, 2007. Print. 14

15. Adina Adler 15