Picturebooks
Graphs, Maps, Trees
On 21, Dec 2015 | In Picturebooks | By Chris Vitale
Moretti, Franco. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History. Paperback ed. London: Verso, 2007. Print.
Referrer: Matt Gold
Categories: digital humanities, distant reading, data visualization, historiography, methodology
Annotation:
This essential piece of the Digital Humanities canon outlines the efforts of Franco Moretti and his team in their journey to distant read the literary work produced over a few centuries. Graphs, maps and trees are shown to be valuable tools for literary scholars, like their natural and social sciences counterparts. The concept of distant reading, application of an analytics and quantification driven approach to reading wide ranges of texts was groundbreaking for the literary community. This historiography of the literary canon illustrates the merit and value of distant reading as a legitimate methodology. Acting as a roadmap for how quantification and visualization can augment, complement, and completely topple traditional research methodologies, this text is a fundamental piece of this Picturebooks project.
