How does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficients? The essays in Distant Reading led to a new and often contested paradigm of literary analysis. In presenting them here Franco Moretti reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, the theoretical influences over his work, and explores the polemics that have often developed around his pos ...Full description
How does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficients? The essays in Distant Reading led to a new and often contested paradigm of literary analysis. In presenting them here Franco Moretti reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, the theoretical influences over his work, and explores the polemics that have often developed around his positions.From the evolutionary model of โModern European Literature,โ through the geo-cultural insights of โConjectures of World Literatureโ and โPlanet Hollywood,โ to the quantitative findings of โStyle, inc.โ and the abstract patterns of โNetwork Theory, Plot Analysis,โ the book follows two decades of conceptual development, organizing them around the metaphor of โdistant reading,โ that has come to defineโwell beyond the wildest expectations of its authorโa growing field of unorthodox literary studies.