Moretti (literature, Stanford) brought digital analysis into the foreground in his previous publications, and he continues this task in the present endeavor. He provides a sweeping analysis of ...bourgeois identity and culture by applying informing keywords and prosaic themes in consort with their mutations as reflected in numerous literary works, extending even to their grammatical constructs and semantic associations.
...Pasanek draws insightful links between developments in metaphor and developments in society. On the website, he writes that he "would be more confident in presenting a statistical picture of ...eighteenth-century discourse" if he had a computerised method for collecting metaphors for the database ("About").
This study is concerned with the identification and the description of the limits, patterns and forms of a particular genre of fiction, the 'Kunstlerroman', or novel of the artist, through a ...comparison among texts from some of the main European literatures. After a preliminary survey of the origin and 'story’ of the genre 'Kunstlerroman', the thesis proceeds with a section devoted to a distinction between the genre in question and all the other genres which constitute 'borderline cases'. Once the 'area' of the 'Kunstlerroman' has been defined, its content patterns are analyzed in detail according to the stages in the life of the artist-hero. The structure of the genre is then described in its various components (chronology, narrator, plot) and the special case of double - or indeed triple - versions of the same novel is taken into consideration. A separate section is devoted to the female 'Kunstlerroman', after a brief panorama of the female narrative tradition, in order to point out the similarities and the differences with the prevailing male prototype. A 'hard' history of the 'Kunstlerroman' is then attempted, through a short, indicative survey of the possible interrelations - in the form of influence, personal knowledge, friendships, correspondences, positive or negative comments, and so on - among some of the authors here considered - who are simply representative and certainly not exhaustive examples of this tradition. Different paths bring different authors to experiment with the same literary genre. There may be autobiographical reasons - writing about someone like yourself, who has had the same experiences and disillusions can have a liberating effect. On the other hand, there may be didactic reasons - showing errors and misjudgements can prevent their happening to someone else. The 'Kunstlerroman'-author may also intend to make a statement about the predicament of the modern artist through the description of the problems and experiences of his own artist-hero. But it is interesting and thought-provoking to see how apparently unrelated authors may have known, read or thought about each other, or may have had at least the same motivation and the same problematic, characteristic of the Kunstlerroman genre, thus contributing to the coherence and duration of the genre itself. Finally, one must consider the changes brought in the aesthetics of the 'Kunstlerroman' by historical, political, and, above all, social developments. If this novel originated as a 'subgenre’ of the 'Bildungsroman' in eighteenth century Germany, it is also true that it spread in the rest of Europe - with obvious changes - during the ninenteenth and the twentieth century. In this regard, it is interesting and fruitful to examine the import of the personality of Richard Wagner and the consequences of Wagnerism, as well as moderns like John Barth, Malcolm Lowry or other authors - so as to see how the 'Kunstlerroman' has changed with the times, and to suggest its possible survival in present day fiction.
My dissertation is an exploration of the metafictive nature of detective fiction dealing primarily with the works of Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. The plots of detective ...fictions depict a process which gathers a series of events into a coherent whole. The resolutions of detective texts provide tight closure, and thus seem to form their plots into self-contained circles. However, there is perhaps no genre which is so self-conscious as that of detective fiction, which draws attention so explicitly to its own constructed status, and to the process by which that form is contrived. Since a detective story centers on the process by which a mystery is explained, its narrative deals explicitly with the process by which a particular narrative--the explanation of a crime--is produced. It also must examine alternative narratives--the false explanations of the crime. Ultimately, the text's analysis of these narratives becomes analysis of the nature of narrative itself. Detective fictions thus examine how and why narratives may be produced, the cultural codings their constructions may contain, and the ways in which narratives generate meaning. By calling attention to their own constructed status, these texts comment on the ways in which arbitrary conventions come to be accepted as true, on and off the page.
44-2545 PN3321 2005-51473 CIP The Novel: v.1: History, geography, and culture; v.2: Forms and themes, ed. by Franco Moretti. Princeton, 2006. 2v indexes afp ISBN 0691049475, v.1; ISBN 0691049483, v.2 ...$99.50 ea.: ISBN 9780691049472, v.1; ISBN 9780691049489 v.2, $99.50 ea.
Distant Reading Schulz, Kathryn
New York Times Book Review,
06/2011
Book Review
Kathryn Schulz discusses the ideas of Italian literary scholar Franco Moretti, the founder of the Stanford Literary Lab. Moretti uses computational modeling and quantitative analysis to consider how ...we read; to uncover the true nature and scope of literature, and to point to the amazing mass of interconnectedness in literary texts in a technique he calls "digital reading."
The Pseudo-Revolution Kirsch, Adam
The New Republic,
05/2014, Letnik:
245, Številka:
8
Book Review
Kirsch reviews several books such as Digital Humanities by Anne Burdick and Johanna Druckler; Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture by Erez Aiden and Jean Baptiste Michel; and Distant ...Reading by Franco Moretti.
Several nonfiction books are reviewed, including Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers and Rebels by Alissa Quart and Distant Reading by Franco Moretti.
Minds over matter Ziauddin Sardar
New Statesman,
04/2006, Letnik:
19, Številka:
907
Book Review
The third problem that radical thought faces is irrelevance - which brings me to Slavoj i ek. Much of what thinkers of this sort have to say has little relevance to the non-western world: that is to ...say, the vast majority of humanity.
